while my thoughts may not be so pure, my actions always will be.

what am i trying to say???

what i've discovered with all this blogging is that it's really difficult to convey thoughts and ideas with the nuances of the english language to everybody equally. we use pictures and words to try to communicate with other people all over the world and the entries we post on our blogs give the reader insight to what we are like. you can also find out more about a person by the blogs they visit and the comments they leave at those blogs. but still, this may not be enough to truly understand how a person thinks and where their morals lay. i find it difficult to edit myself not because i want to be politically correct but because i don't want to hurt anyones feelings, make someone angry or make some feel bad. i definitely don't want to be hated by anyone. let me be clear, i don't have the typing version of tourette's syndrome but sometimes i might not come off sounding right. i always thought i was better able to express myself in written form rather than spoken word partly because of the ability to edit. the past few days, i've read some really intelligent & a lot of times very funny blogs written by seemingly ordinary people and have a renewed appreciation for them because i realize how difficult it really is. i have enjoyed them immensely and now look forward to future installments of their respective blogs so that i may gain further insight into the person, be mentally challenged and/or be made to laugh hysterically. that and i feel creatively stifled.

perhaps a break from posting my own entries is in order here...

all women are beautiful, all men are pricks

talk to me.

my mp3 player

amid all the hysteria surrounding file sharing and mp3 licensing, i have gone out and bought me an mp3 player. i went to my favourite local bigbox warehouse store, costco, to buy some other things when this one caught my eye. i had wanted to buy one for awhile now and had my eye on an ipod shuffle. i knew what kind of features i wanted but never really put that much effort into looking for one and then going to the store to check it out thinking that one that i like might magically appear before me. it did, kinda. i bought the sanyo dmc300. it has 512mb of built-in flash memory (of which, 16mb is taken up by the system leaving you with 496mb), fm tuner, voice and fm recorder and an sd/mm expansion slot for more memory. this last feature was something that i was looking for as i already own sd memory cards for my digital & mini-dv cameras and have an sd reader built-in to my notebook. i have already filled the entire memory with 96 mp3 songs at 192kb sampling. i probably could get 30 or 40 more songs if i had used 128kb sampling but regular mp3 is not a great compression method for sound quality. hopefully sanyo will release a firmware update for an ogg vorbis [wikipedia:home page] decoder! that way, i won't ever have to worry about mp3 licensing because it's open source.

***UPDATE***

i have been asked by 2 people so far about the sanyo dmc300. so i will oblige and share some more useful information about this particular mp3 player.

all-in-all, this unit is pretty easy to use, as are most mp3 players. the design is simple and esthetically pleasing and the blue back-lit lcd screen is large enough to display all the necessary information that you could want to know about the songs that's currently playing. you can adjust contrast and battery saver settings for the screen. as mentioned above, the expandability of the memory is one of the selling features that i truly wanted and a built-in fm tuner with lots of station presets was a real bonus. the voice recording feature is pretty convenient if you want to record some notes, comments or even interviews. the recording is in mono but can be adjusted for the quality of sound and type of compression (better quality=bigger file size=less recording time). there is no voice activated recording but can be paused and then continued on the same file. if you press 'stop', the next time you will start a new file. the documentation seems to indicate that the unit can record fm transmissions but have yet to figure out how to do so. there are also other features such as the ability to scroll lyrics across the screen, change preset equalizer settings, random/repeat and others. the player comes with a quick start guide, ear phones, usb adapter and cd-rom (win98 drivers and additional documentation).

the unit is not without its problems though. for one thing, the buttons are finnicky. you must press & hold the stop button for a few seconds to turn it off but sometimes it fails even though it feels like you are pressing the button. coupled with this problem is that it sometimes fails to remember the last track that was playing (returns to track 1) and compounding the problem, the shuffle algorithm is not really random meaning that it seems the "shuffled" track order is always the same. i also thought the battery indicator wasn't as accurate as it could be. the battery life is good however at about 8-10 hours of use but the indicator still showed power when it cuts out. on my particular unit, it seemed that the fm tuner was not functioning. i reflashed the firmware and that seemed to clear up the problem for me. but all these negatives for an mp3 player that costs $120 shouldn't stop you from getting this unit because it truly is a great deal!

canada day special

for those of you who are unfamiliar with the great white north, here are some facts & figures about canada on this canada day:

• 2nd largest country in the world (9,984,670 square kms or 3,855,174 square miles)


• the largest coastline in the world (243,791 kms or 151,485 miles)


• population of over 32 million (a little less than the population of california)


• highest mountain is mt. logan (5959 m or 19,551 ft.)


• largest canadian city is toronto (4.8 million people)


• average life expectancy of 79 years


• 1,047 radios per 1,000 canadians


• 750 tv's per 1,000 canadians


• 66.8% of canadian households own computers


• 56.9% of canadian households access the internet

to celebrate the closing of the only canadian virgin megastore, here are some canadian music facts:

• bryan adams' biggest hit is (everything i do) i do it for you


• kiss has the most chart albums in canada


• eric clapton is the oldest artist to have a #1 single and britney spears is the youngest


• madonna has had the most #1 singles in canada with 16


• by decade, top ablums in canada are fleetwood mac's rumours (yes, they spell in english) in the 1970's, michael jackson's thriller in the 1980's and alanis morrissette's jagged little pill in the 1990's

photo shoot with a diva

having a camera and a recently opened flickr account, i decided to set up a photo shoot with the aforementioned Iggy. she is my overweight fluffball of a cat.

for this first shoot, i coaxed our model out into our brightly lit studio by giving her one of her favorite things - the catnip lid. she had been trying to tell me something earlier but i had already fed her, refilled her water and emptied the litter box. she probably was wanting her fix, like all those high price runway models. good thing that tyra banks championed plus-sized models on primetime tv or Miss Iggy would definitely not be getting any gigs. it's also a good thing when your agent is the cameraman and provider of the basic daily necessities. i once suggested to her, trying to be the good agent that i want to be, that she get off that high protein atkins diet and go on the south beach one, like fellow blogger JadedManiac suggested - because it obviously wasn't working. she then pointed out she is a carnivore and that the only reason why she eats grass is because she swallowed some fur and would like to wretch. "Yes! Grass makes me f***in' puke my guts out so F*** OFF!" she hissed. so i've never mentioned anything about her diet since.


we started out with some overhead action shots of the buxom Iggy playing with the lid.


when she settled from her sudden initial high, we took some close-up shots of her face, but rarely full on. she despises the typical head shot and will avoid it at all costs.


then, we moved to the sofa. actually she moved to the sofa so I just followed because at this point, i knew the shoot is almost over. she did start to get irritated with my constant presence and started to indicate her impatience by whipping her tail to and fro. in a little while, she was going to crash.

i would like to post the video (.avi) of the final few seconds of our photo shoot. unfortunately, Miss Iggy refuses to sign the release papers so that I can officially publish them. she says, "The f***in' footage portrays me as a violent bitch and it [the punch] would be taken totally out of f***in' context. I was just f***in' tired from all that f***ing work and i just f***ing lost it for a m*****f***in' split second!"

that and i don't know how.

for those of you who missed it in the last post, try this website if you like kittens!

***UPDATE***
as mentioned in my comments, the photos in this post are hosted on blogger's servers. for people who are having problems viewing them, i have uploaded them to my flickr account as well.

sea otter decked out

Sea Otter Decked Out
Originally uploaded by Lester T.

finally got my flickr account going and uploaded a few pics. here's one of them:

my beloved, overweight, sometimes violent cat (not to me,) Iggy. she is lounging like this, trying to entice the other cat of the household, Me'sha to play. Me'sha, incidentally is a tough loner cat who hates all other cats. she hates Iggy and could kick Iggy's butt but she won't fight because she knows Iggy's "in". so she just tries to avoid her like the plague. Iggy likes others and often makes friends with other cats & dogs. she's definitely not a fighter but will inflict horrible pain and rip away human flesh without remorse. stay on her good side and allow her to make the decision on what kind of relationship is going to be formed before ever even THINKING about petting her. ah, she's not so bad. but i'd be cautious...

see more kittys here