Again, sorry for not updating in quite some time, I really don't mean to go on these blogbreaks all the time.

I did head to Prince Albert and attend my Uncle's wedding. I always forgot how great it is to actually spend time with large parts of your family, when you don't actually get together for a while. The only people missing from the wedding were two cousins, and my brother, so it was good.

I got home last Monday night, but when I woke up on Tuesday morning all was not good in paradise. Turns out one of either: (a) my evil roommates; or (b) our evil friends, gave me Tonsillitis. It was either Ryan or Chris, and I know it, those bastards. Anyway, so I've pretty much been on the couch/in my bed for the past 8 days trying to make my way through this bottle of penicillin and hope all is better.

I'll update more when I feel better yo!

Jaret, Ross and I went to the U of C to check out Atmosphere last night. I've been listening to them off and on for a couple of years, and have had a few chances to check them out live, but last night was the first one I took.

Besides the fact that they didn't take the stage until 10:00 and a bunch of mediocre-at-best leading acts ate up the concert for three hours, they were really good. I'm pretty sure that a very good sized chunk of the crowd had not heard their music before, but everyone was still pretty jacked up. I'd check them out if I were you.

I noticed a for sale sign go up across the street, so I decided to check out MLS.ca to see what it's worth. Turns out it is one of two houses worth over $1,000,000 for sale on my street. Craziness!

House 1... you can see my house, and my truck in one of the pictures
House 2

Welp, today I turn 23. Happy birthday to me!

Work has slowed to a near-halt in the Ryan and I's rewrite of Guardian Angels, Inc. Our schedules just aren't meshing at the moment, so I've decided to take some action and started outlining a new (as of yet untitled) screenplay that I'm going to write by myself.

This will mark the first time I've undertaken my own screenwriting project since I finished Teacher in October of 2004, so I'm a little scared. I've got some good (I hope) ideas going for me so far. Let's just hope there is enough for me to get a full outline done, and then I can actually start writing the sucker.

I was looking through my list of referrers and found that my blog and RSS feed is featured on the front page of Reading Calgary. It's kinda freaky, but kinda cool. I have no idea how it got there, but I'm not going to complain.

WARNING: Severe ramble coming.

At one point I was blogging quite prolifically. That point was really not too long ago. Well, it wasn't exactly yesterday either. In May of this year I wrote fifty entries on this here web(log)site. In August, I wrote seven, and before this entry I have written six in September.

StephenGlauser.com is coming up on it's one year anniversary and it seems like I've run out of steam. But why? I slowed down at a time of pretty decent traffic and I was getting pretty good comments, and actual, real discussions were beginning to emerge on the pages of my blog. It's not as if anything has really changed in my life to reflect that all of a sudden I have nothing to write about.

And it's not just that I'm not writing my own blog, I'm neglecting to visit those that I used to frequent. Blogging used to make the internet interesting for me, and now it seems I can hardly be bothered.

I don't really know what I need to do to get back into it. I've toyed with the idea of redesigning the entire site (again) but quickly lost interest in that as well. I've got a few other web projects that I would like to get off the ground, but I just can't find the motivation to get started, and I have no idea why.

Maybe the internet is just losing it's appeal to me after twelve years of use. There are very few things I seem to do online these days:

1. Check out Wikipedia.
2. Talk on MSN to people I don't want to talk to.
3. Maybe talk to a few I do.
4. Check email. (I never receive personal email, I don't know why I check)
5. Play poker. (Even this is becoming boring)
6. Look for good, produced movie scripts.
7. Read and review (generally bad) unproduced movie scripts.
8. Occasionally write something here
9. Occasionally browse the blogosphere.

And that's about it. I remember a time when I used to do something interesting while spending time online. The problem is, I can't remember what any of that interesting stuff was. Oh well, hopefully something will spark interest again. I know, I know, this post comes at a time of (in recent history) unprecedented posting.... I had to ramble.

I've wanted to see Enron since I heard about it quite a few months ago, and finally had the chance about a week ago on Movie Central. I'm not much of a documentary watcher, but something about large corporation and white collar crime grabs me.

The filmmakers really did a good job in getting most of the story across and really delved into the "conspiracy" in a way that was very easy to relate to and understand. Some of the things these guys did is just unbelievable. It's crazy that they got away with it for so long, and how many people were actually involved. imdb

I spent some time last night updating the site and made quite a few changes that regular readers should be able to notice.

First, on the sidebar (to the right for those of you not in the know) I've made the Sask Blogs and Alberta Blogs blogrolls collapsible. I did this simply because I got tired of having to scroll so far to get to the search box.

That brings me to the next update -- I've severely revamped the search results page, if anyone actually uses it. I've also made the blog tag-compatible. You'll notice at the bottom of newer (and future) entries small text that says "tagged: " followed by any number of words. Simply click on one of those words to find other entries tagged with the same words. Sorry for the simplification for those of you who know how tags work (it should be pretty easy to figure out).

The archives have also been revamped. The pages were getting pretty long, so I've also made both archives pages (monthly and categorically) collapsible.

Hmm, what else. Oh, finally, after four or five unsuccessful attempts, I was able to set my blog up for scheduled postings. This will make my life quite a bit easier, but should have no affect on your viewing of the site. I also upgraded Movable Type to 3.32 from 3.31... this update also has no affect on you.

I'm going to be revamping more and more as I go on in an attempt to remotivate my blogging proficiency, hopefully it works. If you have any comments/suggestions about any of the changes I've made, let me know. Love it or hate it, I want to know!

Winter movies make me sick. Especially right before winter, and the day after the first bit of snow flew (yeah, it snowed yesterday... sick). However, there was naught on television and The Ice Harvest was on Movie Central. I'd seen the previews, and it looked mildly entertaining, so I decided to change the channel.

Movie Central gave it 3 stars (out of 4) which I think is a little overrated but it was, as I had expected, mildly entertaining. Besides Billy-Bob and John Cusack, some of the acting was quite bad, and the storyline had holes like crazy but it was still watchable. Don't think I'll pick it up on DVD though. imdb

On Thursday night I entered a $3.30 satellite to a $10,000 prize pool tournament on Jet Set Poker. I won handily. I finished with 55,000 chips and my closest competitor was 18,000. (They gave away four seats, so it didn't go until everyone was out of chips.)

The $10k tournament was today at 3:00 and I was primed and ready. This particular tournament was a Head Hunter, which means that a good chunk (a little more than half in this case I believe) of the prize pool was set aside as "bounties". Every player is assigned a bounty based on their tournament rankings for the month up until today's date. Every time you knock a person out you get that bounty.

I only managed to knock out three people for a total of approximately $130 on my way to finishing 11th place, which came with a prize of about $75.00 for a total of $204.69. I was a little choked that I didn't make it to the final table, which would have put my winnings closer to $300... or even won the damn thing and taken home over $1500, but whatever. Not bad return for $3.30.

After tossing the idea around for quite some time, I've decided that my next new computer will be a Mac. I do, however, plan on upgrading my desktop PC first by buying a newer used model first. Then, it will be MacBook for me. I'm going to wait until after Christmas, as I've learned that Apple is planning on updating both MacBook and MacBook Pro in time for the holidays. A Mac Pro is in the pipeline as well, but that will be quite a bit into the future, when my film making aspirations actually start coming to fruition.

Check out this ad for an original Apple 1 from '76. Gangster.

I was looking for a movie to watch and nothing in my DVD library really popped out and struck me with an urge to watch, so in checking the Movie Central channels as I often do, a movie I had never heard of was about to come on and it was starring Owen Wilson. So I decided to check it out. This movie was The Third Wheel.

I'll admit that I sometimes enjoy watching a romantic comedy (Hitch is a really good one that comes to mind) but am not usually willing to stick my neck out and spend 90 minutes watching something I don't have a really good idea will be funny. This flick was worth checking out without any preconceived notions.

Most romantic comedies are predictable and follow very similar story lines. Not this one, it was fresh, funny and really didn't follow many of the formulaic plot elements that make up 99% of romcoms. Owen Wilson and Denise Richards worked really well together and the supporting cast was equally good. If you have a chance, check it out. imdb

The boys at Cab finally got their shit together and put up their tight new site. Check it out, or better yet, if you're in Yorkton or Brandon, stop by the store and spend some money.

I did some small tweaking for the guys today and will probably do more in the future, in exchange for knockin' a few digits off my tab. Works for me.

Some piece of shit who considers himself my friend, who will remain nameless (namely because I don't know who it was), decided to take some initiative and install Block Checker. This absolutely garbage pile of shit piece of software is apparently meant to let you know if someone has blocked you on MSN Messenger.

First of all, I hate it when people install software on my computer without my prior knowledge and consent. It just aggravates me. It aggravates me even more when the software decides it doesn't want to cede to my uninstall commands, and decides to latch on and continue to bother the hell out of me while trying to carry on MSN.

On top of that the premise of this piece of "software" is just stupid. If someone blocked you, they don't want to talk to you, who cares? Why do you need to know if someone doesn't want to talk to you? I come from a school that teaches "if someone doesn't want to talk to me, fuck them." I tend to block people from time to time, simply because I'm busy and they're talking their face off to me about the difference in color between mustard seed and canola seed, or whether or not they should dye their hair from brown, to dark brown. Crap I generally don't care about.

So, here I am facing a three-pronged problem:

1. Some bastard installed software on my computer.
2. Software sucks.
   • It actually does suck. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work, because I refuse to believe that there isn't one person on my buddy list that doesn't have me blocked.
   • Damn thing won't obey commands. I tell it to get the hell off my computer, and it stays there.
   • It interrupts my typing any time someone changes their name... or when I first load up a window... or when someone first messages me.
3. I don't even agree with the damn concept.

About 45 minutes ago I finally figured out how to get rid of this nuisance. I removed it from the list of programs that automatically run on startup using Easy Cleaner (I forgot how to do it using Windows). Then I just straight up deleted the intruder from Program Files, deciding not to care about having it in my Add/Remove Programs List ... I'll figure this out later. A quick reboot and one of my problems are solved.

Since I've suffered through this crap for well over a month, I'm still going to try and figure out who did this. Once I find out who did it, I'm going to put them in a burlap sack. See how they like that.

I can be accused of being an absentee blogger from time to time, and have pointed this out myself. I'm going to really try to cut back on my blogbreaks from now on, as I am really starting to become frustrated with some people.

I mean, it's cool to go a day or two or three without posting anything, but when some of my favorite blogs on topics important to me become absent. I check my RSS reader, no updates. So I jump on their sites just to see if my RSS reader is broken. Nope. Dammit. Update!

Most of the personal blogs I read/subscribe to update regularly, why can't these people?

ed: add my sister to the list of the massively asbent. weak.

Sam sent me this picture of Tiger and Chanel last night, and I feel obliged to post it.

Tiger has been in our family for approx. 11 years (he's obviously the old, fat one), but has not lived with me for 3 or so. I mis him lots. Chanel looks remarkably like Tiger -- who was a lot darker when he was younger -- aside from Tiger's white tufts of hair all over (like his "boots", all four white paws). Apparently Tiger has taken the role of Chanel's guardian. Cool beans.

For the first entry in the Movies category that isn't a review, I'm going to write about remakes.

Hollywood has been no stranger to the remake in recent years and have brought us movies such as The Dukes of Hazzard, Bad News Bears and The Longest Yard -- to name a few in my DVD collection. All three of the originals were from the 1970s, before my time.

But now they're going too far. They're screwing around with things from my childhood. On top of these idiots remaking classics like Back to the Future, 2007 will bring us movies like Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

If you ask me the '80s weren't long enough ago to start redoing the best movies of that decade. The Hollywood execs aren't allowing these films (referring to BTTF) time to become true classics. By releasing a remake so quickly (I know twenty-plus years isn't really quick, but you get my point) you are robbing the film of any chance to cement itself in the mind of those who saw it when it was somewhat new.

That being said, I still want to see Miami Vice and am really looking forward to seeing the new Transformers and TMNT movies. I dunno, I'm just pissed that they're remaking Back to the Future.

After more than two years of using Final Draft exclusively for screenwriting, I 've decided to give a new program a chance. celtx is a free, open source screenwriting program.

One big problem I see with actually writing the screenplay in celtx is that it doesn't break up the script into pages until you export it as a PDF. It is more of a sandbox type of editing that just goes on continuously forever. I don't like this as it disorients me a little and makes it difficult to know exactly how much progress I'm making.

That being said, it offers great outlining capabilities. Not only can I effectively write my outline (sometimes tough in Final Draft), but I can also keep files on all of my characters, jot notes down as they come to me, etc. Also, if I ever do get to the point of making a film, it offers a few other great features such as location and actor files, etc.

celtx is currently in a pre-release phase (current version 0.9.7) so I expect to see a lot more in the way of features in the (hopefully) near future.

All you screenwriters out there, I would definitely suggest at least checking it out.

Aside from the regular crew of television shows that everyone enjoys, I've been watching more and more HBO (read: Movie Central) and Showcase original shows that nothing short of outstanding:

• Billable Hours (Showcase)
• Entourage (Movie Central)
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Showcase)
• Weeds (Showcase)
• The Wire (Movie Central)

On top of the above shows, NBC has got a great new show out called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, starring Matthew Perry. I caught the second episode last night and am pretty sure I'm going to be a weekly viewer. The show is masterfully acted, well written and funny. The show is a behind-the-scenes look at a fictional SNL-type variety show. I wish I saw the pilot, guess I'm going to have to wait for the DVD to come out.

If you are a regular reader, you have no doubt noticed a vigorous comeback of content on this site as compared with recent months. While I'm happy I'm actually getting around to posting something here, I'm still not happy with the whole.

I've been using this design since early May and I have made many "tweaks" that in retrospect make the whole thing seem disjointed and unplanned. The more I look at it the more the bad design elements jump out at me. Also, when I designed the current theme I was still coming off a fairly lengthy absence from web design/programming and a lot of my old (bad) habits crept into the design and code and I'm simply not happy with that.

I've been researching trends in design and usability for a project I've been working on, and the more I read, the more I dislike my site. So. Expect a full redesign in the coming weeks. Everything is going to change. Every page. The entire way you interact and view my site will be changed. Although I have a lot of ideas, I haven't actually started planning the redesign yet, so it is a few weeks off.

If anyone with any photoshop skills would like to help me out with a few graphics, that would be outstanding. I currently only need one graphic! So, yeah, if you could help me out, woot woot!

My entry proficiency might drop off a bit in the meantime, but be patient please! In the meantime, Sam has started updating again, so pop over and say hello so she doesn't take another two month vacation.

Firefox 2 Release Candidate 1 is up for download. Release candidates are feature-complete and pretty stable. Check it out, it's a big improvement over the already awesome Firefox 1.5.

I found the Sreenplay Format Guide via a Google Ad on 52 Screenplays. I like the design of the site, and the document actually looks pretty neat, although I doubt any writer would get too much use out of it.

Unfortunately, the damn thing is $14.95 USD. I don't know who they think is going to pay this much for four laminated pieces of paper (Front, Inside, Inside, Back) when they can find all of the same information on the internet in a few minutes.

The company in charge of this guide are apparently also responsible for ScriptBuddy. It seems to be a mixture of Final Draft and Writely, but falls flat on it's face when put side by side with either of them. I couldn't actually figure out how to start writing a screenplay. Just garbage.

What's really weird is that they have Google Ads on their ScriptBuddy site (which also accepts subscriptions for ScriptBuddy Pro, but does not feature these ads on the site that should -- Screenplay Format Guide. Although they have a couple of decent ideas their execution is just garbage. They should have made the guide free and generate revenue via ads. And they should have made ScriptBuddy usable.

From its content to its visual components, a photograph is filled with information. Choose a point on an image and delve deeper into it, linking one idea to another in a never-ending chain.

Marturia pointed me towards this site about photos made up of hundreds of little photos. Check it out.