The Advantage:

The whole philosophy behind FiveFingers come from the notion that the modern running shoe has set back millions of years of podiatric(foot) evolution. Leonardo Di Vinci has been quoted as saying “The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.” and for the most part this is quite true. Vibram notes on their website that our feet have as many as 26 bones, 20 muscles, 33 joints, as well as a multitude of sensory receptors, tendons and ligaments that the modern shoe just doesn’t make use of. As a result, many of our feet, since childhood, have been set in a sad state of atrophy. When we walk in our modern day shoes we feel very little, move our feet very little, and have been conditioned, for the most part, to step heel toe.

The modern shoe has been developed over the years to encourage this type of “heel toe” step. However, in recent years studies have been conducted to discern whether or not this type of running and walking is ideal for our feet. Further studies are obviously needed, and I’m no scientist, but as I understand it, findings have been showing that landing on your heel puts a lot of high impact stress on your legs and joints which can result in problems and injury later down the figurative road.

Barefoot running has been said to improve all kinds of natural aspects of your foot such as the range of motion in your feet’s joints (toes, ankles, etc.), muscle strength in your calves, feet, and lower legs, balance, agility, proprioception, body awareness, and posture among other things. So, in short, barefoot running seems pretty darn swell.

My KSOs:

Many of you who know me personally, know that I’ve been an avid martial artist for several years now, of which involves training in bare feet. In high school I spent a lot of time in track and field training, and although I never became an Olympic runner or professional athlete, running and jogging has always been an important part of my daily regimen. I also find the notion of “natural remedies” and “natural” products to be intriguing. So, suffice it to say, all this talk about the Vibram barefoot advantage, has piqued my interest in the last few months.

I noticed FiveFingers were out of stock, via the official website, for several months. Only one store in Toronto (MEC on King st.) currently sells them, and they’re consistently out of stock as well. One can only assume Vibrams have become a hot commodity so I jumped at the chance a few weeks ago to order a pair when I noticed they were finally in stock.

Choosing your Vibram model can be a daunting task. Vibrams come in all types and flavours and I opted for the popular KSO line. KSO is short for “keep stuff out” since the shoe has a top covering lacking in the other models that.. well.. keeps stuff out! KSO’s are also marketed to be useful in all types of terrain and activity due to their, tougher than average, design.

I naturally chose black because it was the least ugly of all the colours and styles. I had been warned to be prepared to get funny looks from people, as FiveFingers do not look in any way like your average footwear. My coworker had even told me they looked creepy upon viewing the website photos. I don’t know if I’d go as far as calling them creepy, but they certainly look odd I suppose.

How They Feel:

My KSOs finally arrived on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. After opening the modest shoebox, I immediately proceeded to try them on. My initial concerns were that the shoe might not fit me. Lack of store demos had prevented me from actually TRYING before buying, and I found the Vibram sizing chart to be slightly confusing. The chart uses it’s own sizing system based on the actual length of your longest foot in inches. I went for a size slightly larger than my foot (by maybe 1/4 of an inch) just to be safe.

At first when I tried on the shoe/slipper/glove it felt a little loose on my foot, but my toes DID reach well into the foot sockets and for the most part the KSOs hugged my foot comfortably. Comfortable is a great word to describe these things, because they feel fantastic. The fabric breathes and allows air to flow through, and it’s very snug around your foot. The slippers were a bit stiff at first but after working them in a little I found they bend and flex quite naturally with the contours of my foot. I have no complaints about how they feel, they feel great!

My first jog in my Vibrams was an interesting one. You literally feel EVERYTHING in these things. When you hit a twig, you KNOW you just stepped on a twig. When you hit a significantly sized rock, the FiveFinger rubber sole bends over the rock and you can feel it’s shape pressing into your foot. It’s a really neat experience for those who are used to heavily padded running/walking shoes. You kind of get a sense of natural freedom. Due to the mesh fabric and thin lining, air flows freely over your feet and you can feel hot and cold instantly… exhilarating!

During my test-drive I took the vibrams over all types of terrain, grass, dirt, pavement, pebbles, large rocks, etc. The result was pleasing. I found I had much more control since the human foot seems to do a great job gripping, bending, and moulding to any form of earth. It is said that actual jogging and running in Vibrams can be difficult at first if you are conditioned to use running shoes since you use very different muscle groups. I made conscious effort to strike the ground with the palm of my foot and let my heel down last. This way, my foot palm acts as a sort of shock absorber, letting my heel down easy, versus the more destructive rolling heel impact I was warned about online.

The Verdict:

I found it fairly easy to adapt to barefoot activity, but I did notice my muscles get tired and sore fast so I’ve been taking it easy. I think that being an active Capoerista has significantly strengthened my muscles involved in barefoot exercise enough to make it a relatively painless and simple transition for me. I have to say that martial arts is incredible in Vibrams. While, usually, it is best for a Capoerista to ACTUALLY go barefoot so that their feet become tough to withstand outdoor Capoeira, I found that the KSOs do give me a much stronger grip and keep my feet clean from dirt and other nasty things that may be lurking outdoors.

Taking the shoes out for a walk to the drug store was equally comfortable. I noticed my right foot was cramping up which was a little painful, but I’m not sure I’d blame this on the shoe, probably more so my feet getting used to barefoot walking. Feeling all the cracks and bumps in the concrete is really cool and definitely makes walking more interesting.

Closing Thoughts:

In conclusion I highly recommend Vibrams. Although I was initially concerned about their fit, they ended up fitting like a glove (pun intended) in all aspects of my active life (so far). I enjoy the new tactile sensations of feeling the ground and wind over my feet like never before. My feet feel stronger, flexible, and more dexterous, and I feel that my KSOs have helped improve my Capoeira training in this way. I haven’t had a lot of issues with pain, and long term effects have yet to be observed but I’m optimistic.

A lot of people have been naturally curious about my strange foot gloves, some have poked fun, others have asked where to buy them, and strangers sometimes stare, but for the most part people don’t really notice unless you bring attention to them. I’ll definately be getting a lot of use out of these things and I’ll keep you guys updated on future developments. I urge you all to give them a try!

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there’s no place for the iPad, and I’m not saying it’s horrible. As far as the iTouch line-up goes, it’s DEFINATELY an improvement on the iTouch/iPhone family. The screen is larger and gorgeous (from what I can see), the OS is much more responsive (judging by Engadget hands-on video), and browsing the internet looks like a fantastic and joyful experience. The larger screen size and boost in computing power means viewing websites and digital media will be much easier and faster then ever before. The device is also just as purty as I would expect from an Apple product. It looks sleek, glossy, minimal, clean, and sexy. All things I’d want from a new, must-have gadget. The fact that iWork is now available for this device, as well as many improvements to the built-in apps, are definitely welcome.

Personally I was hoping they would present a device closer to an iTouchified MacBook. I was hoping for something with open hard-drive storage and finder, something that can multi-task, something with MMS built-in, something that can handle video-conferencing on the fly, something that can integrate with my other media devices around the house, a chat program that runs on the sidelines, something that can finally handle flash like OSX browsers, something that can project holographic data in 3D space, signal the alien motherships… You know the basics… It almost feels like Apple overestimated their iTouch/iPhone success and decided that people simply would clamor for more of that on a larger scale. Apple appears to be shooting to fully realize their online store model (read:$$$$) by creating a locked down device where people can buy their hearts out. They’ve introduced a more powerful mobile iTunes store, App store, and now an E-Book store to boot. It may be revolutionary to Apple’s big wig pocket books, but to the average consumer, it just sounds silly to call this a revolution. Several years ago, going from a dinky Motorola that just makes calls and sends txts, to a gorgeous and robust multi-touch digital media center, PDA, communication and office station in the palm of your hand; now THAT was a revolution!

At this point I think it’s worth briefly noting that I believe the iPad DOES have the potential of bridging the gap between smartphones and desktops, forcing corporations and organizations to tailor their websites and digital media to be more accessible to a wider audience. Safari on the iPad probably already rivals Safari on a MacBook, but being a mobile device, bandwidth limitations will need to be seriously considered, as well as issues of Flash accessibility if the iPad catches on as widespread phenomenon (not only just as an Apple product, but competitor imitations as well). I know on my iPhone there are plenty websites that consistently display poorly, buggy, or not at all by using Flash as a platform, or crashing my iPhone Safari.

I for one, look for more than just a media platform in which I can buy and view digital media and content. I want a productivity tool, something I can install Firefox and something powerful and robust enough to run software like Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash. This device does none of those things, although, I should give it credit for integrating iWork in the mix. That’s definately a step forward, but with no hard-drive it seems it would be difficult to use this thing as you would a laptop, transferring files and folders from system to system. I also don’t understand how you can have a tablet with no hand-writing software. Even if hand-writing is becoming more and more obsolete as a way of inscribing official documents, they still could of added it as a side-thought at least (or maybe they have and I haven’t noticed?).

So, in conclusion, when my iPhone finally gives out, or when I feel like I have money to waste on something fun, this thing could be useful (I guess it wouldn’t really replace my iPhone without phone functionality, would it?). There will be a lot of die hard fan boys and average Joe office workers who will clamour for this, I’m sure. I can definately see myself enjoying this thing on my couch, or when I’m out of town without my desktop. It’s a toy with potential to be more. If some really powerful apps (Photoshop/Flash iPad) are developed for it, perhaps I will consider purchasing one, but for now, sitting at a $499 USD (low-end model) - $829 USD price tag (high-end model) it seems like the MacBook Air is still the closest thing to a Tablet MacBook any of us are going to get.

So basically this movie is about a near future world populated by mostly humans turned vampires. These vampires are just as intelligent as they were in their human forms, and retain most of their human emotions and personalities, etc, so they’re basically just superhuman humans who thirst for blood. Their weakness hold true to traditional vampire lore (death by sun, wooden stakes, etc.) and the civilized world sort of keeps on spinning despite the vampire’s shortcomings.

So as you’d expect, unturned humans become quite the commodity, since most of the world has already become vampires, there are few humans left, and they sort of become hunted as cattle. Corporations take advantage of the situation, and vampires who don’t get enough blood become ravenous monsters, yadda yadda, that’s about all you need to know.

The success of this movie doesn’t come with an intellegent storyline. Most of the movie strains to be serious, but inevitably reeks of cheese, however this shortcoming is also the success of the film in my eyes, because it’s an awesome variety of cheese. Just as blue cheese stinks, but tastes great (to some), this movie was hilarious and entertaining and I definately recommend it to anyone who wants some cheap thrills and good old fashioned laughs.

Daybreakers kind of reminded me of an old horror B-Movie of yore, blended with the ultra slick and cool styling of modern cinema, much like Blade or the Matrix. The cheap thrill of something jumping out at you, or exploding into a mess of gore was relentlessly consistent throughout the movie, but I think perhaps the best part of the movie was two actors, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill. Niell being the heartless corporate villian, and Dafoe cast as a sort of badass comic relief I suppose. Ethan Hawke was kind of cheesier than the others, but appropriate in his role as the sort of aloof melodramatic hero of the movie, and all other characters were sort of secondary filler for the story.

Anyway, I recommend this movie for sure. It was not so great from a believable, realistic, or intellegent story, but it definately was entertaining and a unique take on the vampire genre I thought. It was a pretty cool concept, executed well enough. I really enjoyed the art and cinematography styling of the movie as well; reminded me much of the Matrix and Blade with more thrills and less action, basically.

4/5 stars from me! Go see it if you’re bored!

I just recently finished a new layout for a website I’ve been working on, www.thespicelady.ca. Check it out, it’s actually a very useful website full of handcrafted gourmet recipes, tips, suggestions, etc.

Also, check out my recently accepted Submission to Dinosaurs F’n Robots.com

Warning: Kind of NSFW.. (read cartoons engaging in coitus.)

http://dinosaursfuckingrobots.com/post/94554671/illustrated-by-chad-elston

Artist of the moment: I figured I should probably honour the continuity of my previous artist micro-blurbs to hold consistency to my rantings (or lack thereof). This time I would like to mention my most favorite DJ duo of recent time, Crookers! (Or, in proper Italian accent, crew-cairs!). Crookers (the Crookers?), are 2 dudes, Bot and Phra, and they’re signed, of course, to my favorite DJ’s record label, Mad Decent Records. I love these guys cuz their sets are a non stop flurry of bass pounding, energy charged, Fidget House. Fidget House is of course an unofficial term coined to describe this frantic, cut-up, House music style. I still like the term Electro Crunk, because the music sounds pretty Electro and Crunky to me. I guess Crookers sort of traverse a range of styles in their mixes and sets. If you want a good primer on Crookers, I’d start with their Radio 1 Essential Mix if you can get a hold of that. It’s basically anything and everything they’d done up to that date with some other stuff thrown in. Incredible!

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So, I’ve been pulling my hair out, yet again, due to the uncalled for complexity presented by CSS coding techniques. I mean CSS is actually a very simple language, and very easy to pick up and learn. The difficult part is learning how to use it PROPERLY.  I love the many facets of design and putting my creative juices to the test, but when it comes to stylizing webpages and lining up it’s rigid skeletal grid to hold all of the content precisely where I want it, I’m completely stumped. Don’t get me wrong, I know this isn’t an easy task, learning such a muddled and conflicted language such as Cascading Style Sheets. It’s had such a torrential history, I suppose, being used in different ways by different browsers for sometimes different purposes.

Internet Explorer, as usual, is the worst culprit at present time, refusing to conform to the same standards as everyone else. They seem to love to take existing great things and attempt to make them better in their own special way *cough* Silverlight *cough*. (To be fair, I do know that the latest versions of Internet Explorer are a little easier to work with and more conforming than previous versions like IE6). It makes learning CSS that much more difficult for a hobbyist web designer like me. I’ve tried several different books, but the problem with these books is that they teach the basics of the language itself. There are few books that teach the hacks and the work-arounds necessary to side-step the accessibility, the incompatibilities, and the inconsistencies between browsers. The ones that DO teach these hacks are difficult to use as reference since there are many ways to work around different issues. I suppose it’s almost as if to effectively and creatively use CSS tableless design to it’s fullest you need to learn the ins and outs of CSS and how each browser handles each property and rule, as well as how to avoid problems in each case. It’s a heck of a lot of junk to cram into your brain, especially if you’re not a CSS designer by profession. It just seems like CSS could be much simpler to use. I hope some day we’ll see that happen.

At the present moment, I’m feeling the pinch of these frustrations mostly because I’ve gotten knee deep into Wordpress Theme modification and design. I started toying with the idea of using Wordpress as a CMS for my own sites, as well as client websites. It’s a great and robust CMS, if somewhat simplistic, that allows a certain level of ease in posting new content and editing existing content.  The trick is learning how to use it best, and which plugins offer the extra features you would need to mimic a fully functional (usually small-business) website. I think my problem is that I will start with a simple CSS framework and then I’ll find something that breaks in a different browser, so I’ll scour the net until I find a plausible fix, and then I’ll plug that fix into my file, but then I’ll find a problem where the answer isn’t clearly stated anywhere on the net, so I will start trial and error edits until I find a fix. Then my file will become monstrously large with so many edits and hacks and additions that I will forget what does what, where things need to be. I will forget which parts of the file should be strictly for structure, and which for design, etc.

So far it seems that the best way to learn work-arounds is to find someone who already has proven themselves to be at an expert level of CSS design technique. This way, unlike a book, you have the ability to pose a specific question and get a specific tailored answer to your issues. I find this a bit of an issue for me since I only know of one person who may or may not know the answers to my questions. Online forums are alright but expressing your complex and various CSS frustrations is a bit of a chore and a tricky one at that.  If anyone knows of anything/anyone that may be of help let me know in comments.

In closing, I have to say,  that upon viewing the CSS and PHP files created by other designers, I’m more often than not, bewildered by all the little scripts, functions, and CSS hacks they’ve put in motion to generate their attractive bullet-proof designs. Figuring out WHY someone does something in a certain way in any given CSS file of any given theme is a hefty task. I suppose I’ll just need to find someone who can help me navigate these murky waters…

I noticed that this game has pushed me so far as sneaking in some televised hockey viewings every now and then since I’ve started learning the names of players and familiarity of the teams.

I suppose my ‘NHL 09-capades’ date back to a few months ago, when the guys at my office bought an Xbox and some games for the team to release stress and frustration with after long days at the office. As one would expect our competative natures took hold and subsequently we began to wage more and more hockey challenges upon each other as the weeks rolled by.

These cascading causal events led to the historic formation of the EAHL (E-Axis Hockey League), in which more organized battles were drafted in the form of a tournament (hockey season). We had several teams at our disposal, but I, of course, opted for a more vintage relic “The Winnipeg Jets” (Pheonix Coyotes in disguise).

The official EAHL logo.

I can’t help but be patriotic to my long lost home team, which the powers that be often leave me glimmers of hopeful anticipation in the idea of their triumphant return. For now they only exist, in-game, as Pheonix dressed in vintage jerseys. Unfourtunately, although they bear the Jet’s colours and iconic logo in the game, they are still only the current Pheonix roster dressed as the Jets, but that’s enough for me.

I seemed to do alright in our first Season, although just as I was making my way up the ranks towards a spot in our office version of the “Play-Offs”, I suffered a spirit crushing defeat (6-1 ….terrible..  I KNOW!) to an opponent who I was previously prone to defeating with ease  in our previous games. Never-the-less it was a gripping and thrilling season where many tears were wept and much metaphorical blood was shed. In the aftermath, our best office player, Fiz, won the little mini trophy cup that our creative Creative Director threw together for the prize. It now sits on his desk, glimmering at me and taunting me with it’s $5 pewter shine and taped on “EAHL” paper cut-out. I would of relished that bragging right, but for now I can settle as being the underdog surprise until our next season where I will thoroughly crush my opposition! *Evil crackling laugh*

Hopefully I’ll find a good picture of the markham robot visors to show off later. They are equally hilaious. I’ll explain more about this later, but in the meantime feel free to check out more Markham hilarity in my photo album at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmax.

Btw this was posted from my worpress iPhone app while I was on the bus, how cool is that?

This last weekend I took part in the third ever Toronto Indie Game Jam, that coincidentally spaned across 3 days, AKA TOJam #3. On arrival I quickly realized that my apparent lack of plannering had landed me with a laptop, borrowed to me (by a very kind and generous individual), was not quite up to par with my expectations and left me kind of scrambling. It’s not that the laptop was a bad machine, it was just a little aged and slow and lacked the ability to install the software I needed to create my game (Flash/AS2, and Photoshop). As well, I had no mouse, only one of those funny little laptop keyboard nubs. So Friday was kind of a write-off which was a bit daunting to say the least. However due to some quick thinking and some craftyness I managed to get my old Dell desktop to the event, which despite it’s age (probably about 6-7 years old now) it still manages to hold it’s own with basic software such as Flash. I had a lot of fun observing the other teams, which was also a little daunting since I wasn’t able to put together a “team” in time. The venue was pretty cool and kind of fit the whole idea of “indie” very well. I think it must of been some sort of abandoned factory; not sure because I hadn’t done any research on the location, I just knew how to get there. I went as a “one-man-show”, but it was nice to socialize and observe the kinds of languages and games others were designing and developing. I showed up a little late and was almost listed as a cancellation so I had no real official name card and ended up in the smaller, less aesthetic of the two rooms, which was fine with me really. I do have to say however, 30 machines running in unison can make for a pretty toasty oven of work-place which made my wardrobe choice of a thin t-shirt quite suitable. After some brief socializing I went straight into my game development mode which got to the point of nearly obsessive. I soon noticed that after 2 days I hadn’t really eaten much food since I wanted to spare no time in getting my idea up and running. While most teams had maybe a programmer, a graphics guy, a guy to handle a bit of both and sound, etc. I was self-endowed with the wide array of all these tasks (to be fair, I had help from a sound floater, a graphics floater, even though I didn’t actually use either assets in my game, and a very helpful guy named Paul.) So my idea was Moon Cheese Money. A treacherous and humorous game where you, the main character Johnson, is sent to the moon by a silly and inuendo-filled 1950’s era dialogue, to mine precious moon cheese to help save America’s perilous economy. Johnson soon finds he’s joined by the evil commies who plan to steal his precious moon cheese, leaving his country in disarray. So I kind of poked fun at some old political jokes I guess. While many people were knee deep in code and game mechanics I tried to spend a generous amount of time playing around with story elements, and cute game-play quirks, while keeping my game simple enough that I didn’t drown in my own technical problems. Basically, you circle around the moon, find craters, blow them up with dynamite, collect the cheese, give the cheese to the little man in the rocketship that lands periodically, and avoid the commies who steal your cheese and your Johnsons (another word for “lives”) and thus make your president a very unhappy president. I’m known to be a very ambitious artist/designer/coder often overshooting my abilities with wild ideas. This idea was seemingly too difficult at first, but I found ways to dance around my programming shortcomings to find ways to kind of “fake” a lot of things that would have required a serious amount of mathematics and algorithmic jargon. I’m definately not a toned mathlete so I tried to stick to methods that I would be familiar with. After all, I’m more of a creative thinker versus a more sophisticated logically minded techie. Or maybe it’s better to say I’m a bit of a blend since I love playing with Actionscript code, but I would never feel at home with ONLY code and restricted creative input. Anyhow, I ran into some problems with collision detection and my fun little message box (the president’s head pops up to offer fun filled advice and notices during runtime). With some help I managed to get over those obstacles and I think my game really turned out to be what I had hoped. There were obviously some things I had to cut corners with due to the time restraints but it looked like people really enjoyed the humor of my game, even though there were some bugs here and there in the gameplay. I would be interested to play test the thing some more and come out with a more polished game later down the road. I should mention a few of my favorite games. I can’t remember the names now, but I remember having fun with a game where you squash bugs with your keyboard. It had such a fresh tactile game mechanic that I’d never seen before in a game, and turned out to be really fun/addictive, so kudos to the team who came up with that one. I also really enjoyed a sea monster game, where you eat little people of little ships with a serpant sea monster avatar. I loved the quick point and click tongue flick gameplay, also a joy and quite addictive. I think the best game design in this challenge came from those who were able to find interesting ways to interact with their games, or a gameplay mechanic that has been previously unexplored in the industry, or previously unheard of. I also appreciated a game where you use drumsticks and an electronic drumpad controller to move your character onscreen; another great example of a tactile gameplay mechanic that was creatively employed. I had fun with all the games, however, and it was really neat to see how many variations people came up with, on this year’s theme. Good job to everyone reading this, who attended and designed/developed! Anyhoo, that’s my little rundown of the event. I’ll look forward to attending next year! Thanks to the organizers who made such a neat event! I can’t post my game just yet due to TOJam rules, but stay tuned for when it will probably be uploaded along with all the other games to the TOJam site. I will try to upload some photos I took at the event soon. Stay tuned for updates.

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Well I’m living alone now for a week and I figured it’s probably a good time to bust out my mad cooking skills. So far I’ve almost mastered breakfast meals. I’ve learned how to cook pretty much every form of prepared egg imaginable (omlettes, scrambled, sunny side up, hardboiled, etc.). I’ve also got the art of the pancake down pretty well. Today I decided to try something new and I fried up some store-bought blintzes and then made my own fresh strawberry and raspberry sauce. I decided that it would be too sour if I just fried up the strawberries and raspberry’s alone so I threw in some raw blue agave necter to sweeten things a bit. I think it turned out pretty well. It was pretty damn tasty.. I added some plain yogurt in there too but it was pretty sour and I think it counterbalanced the sweetness of my sauce. Furthermore, I’ve definately mastered the art of frying up home fries. They’re pretty simple but with added onions and smoked paprika they taste soooo f-n good.

So now that I’ve mastered the art of breakfast meals it only seems proper for me to move onto more involved meals. I think tonight I will try my first “meat” dish and fry up a stir fry. I already have some frozen chicken and I should have the rest of the ingredients lying around. It definately helps to have a gourmet, cooking enthusiast, mother. All our utensils are top quality and the house is always stocked with random top quality ingredients. Makes my learning easier since I don’t have to spend so much time trying to find things or shop for things. I also seem to get really paranoid about food saftey. Again my mother is also a food safety trainer so I’ve learned a few things, but for some reason I can’t shake the concern that food I’m cooking with may have gone bad. At any rate I’ll be posting more on the stir fry later once I give it a shot. Bye for now!