OK!

Brain melt down. Somebody has gone and hidden not just ONE, but at least TWO DIFFERENT snowmen on my computer.

I give you:
☃

So it's a UTF thing. Which is a whole can of crazy. I was searching for ８, trying to figure out how it was different from 8, (8 - ８ huh?) and discovered a kind of terrifying world of symbols waiting for me. Symbols like Astrological and Meteorological and Logical symbols. Japanese Kanji. Tibetan letters. Weird things. And then I found him. The secret snowman hidden on my computer. I IM'd my findings to Saf, and discovered that it was worse than I even realized...

My IM and my browser display DIFFERENT snowmen. What?

Here's Google chrome, as displayed on http://www.fileformat.info/info/charset/UTF-8/list.htm?start=7168 and how the snowman appears in dialog boxes:

And here it is as it appears on my LJ page, in my IM window, and even in the Title Bar of the browser window when the page title has a snowman in it:


Who PUT that snowman there? Who decides these things? Now a snowman, what's next? A starfleet symbol, or the rebel alliance? I know! UTF should have a shpongle mask!

So! What does the snowman look like on your computer? How many snowmen can you find hiding in your fonts? Will bullwinkle be able to escape from boris and natasha's evil plan? Find out next week uh I mean, post your results in the comments!

Ooh! I wonder which snowman(men) will turn up the RSS feed and the version that is syndicated to my facebook!

Crazy stuff....

EDIT: OMGWTFBBQZOMG!!!!! It is different on my friends page than if you go to the entry page itself. Try it and see if it is like that for you: http://djsunkid.livejournal.com/friends vs. http://djsunkid.livejournal.com/111158.html

*headexplode*

Second edit:
OK! I found a font analyser to look for more snowmen! I have 444 fonts installed so it isn't easy to just look through them all, but http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/font/fontlist.htm makes it easy. In 444 fonts I found in 33 fonts, only appears in Arial Unicode MS; and a brand new one with a fancy scarf appears in 5 fonts. Here's all three of them together:


Final edit, really: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2603/fontsupport.htm has a bunch more different snowmen.

Great scott!

OK, so I was explaining how I love Coconut Curry for how simple it is to prepare. All you have to do basically is cut up some veggies, throw them in a wok with the green curry paste, then add a can of coconut milk and boil. But what I said was:
"Put veg in pot open, can and boil"

Which has the same cadence (meter?) as a phrase from Jessica's childhood:
"Paste on cardboard, colour and cut out"

They are fun to say! The repetition of stresses Da Du Da Du, with the little gallop in the middle of "colour" or "open". Try it.

Anyway, is there a name for this kind of poetry meter? Can you think of other examples of simple recipes that fit the same form? I tried and thought of:
"Crack egg in bowl, add oil and stir" for mayonnaise but it doesn't have the gallop... maybe:
"Crack egg in bowl, add flavour and oil" but it doesn't have the verb ending that makes it so satisfying.

What else?

edit: Risotto!
"Fry rice in pot, slowly add hot stock"
Woo!

woo.

I am SO excited. In just 16 days, I am going to be throwing my first ever event outside of the city that I grew up in. I've been working on it about 15 hours a day for the past few days. Now we have a flyer and a venue. Behold the majesty of my flyer design:


Tomorrow I am going to go to the sound place that Chris suggested to ask about sound rental, and if they have LASERS. I want lasers SO HARD!

This is going to be epic. I just know it!

I am pretty happy with my set from last night at Cedar Ceiling.
( Track listing with notes under the cut )

Or, you can download the set for your listening pleasure from http://sunkid.ca
Here is a direct link:
sunkid - set for Cedar Ceiling

Who in the hell is David Goroztietta, and what gives him the right to ruin OUR parties? I'm SO angry right now.

http://www.squamishchief.com/article/20090904/SQUAMISH0101/309049945/-1/squamish/rave-organizers-investigated

ANGER! We've had so many beautiful parties there. For two years! Who do they think they are?

I'm all excited and stuff.

That's not the real flyer, just a mock up i did for fun.

So, as I mentioned on my facebook status last week I have now conquered "hot" at the noodle box on 4th ave. It was really, really spicy. How hot was it? Well, just as an experiment, today I decided to have a spoon full of sambal olek. It was pretty spicy. Not as spicy as "hot" at the noodle box. My coworkers think I'm crazy. I think they might be right.

Now on to "xtra-hot". Muahahahaahahaa...!

Ho-boy! Is this going to be awesome! (Not a question)

Hah! Oh yeah, I'm supposed to write here, or whatever.

Well... I am in the middle of working and spinning quite a bit. You should come to Organix on August 7th. Safiire and I are both playing, so definitely expect a lot of spooky awesomeness. I'm also playing this weekend at Godizus, but I don't know when exactly. I'm hoping that the organizer will get back to me soon about that.

My real job is going well too. It is like a busy saturday night 7 nights a week now. Fun, but exhausting.

I am LOVING the heat wave. 35+ degrees all week. Awesome.

Surprise! I got the night off work, so Jeska and I are going to Fuel. Tasting menu! Woo! It will be neat for me to see how another chef chooses his progression. I've created far more tasting menus than I have ever tried. Actually, the only other tasting menu I can think of that I've been to was at Tojo's last summer. I'm pretty excited.

Oh, and since nobody else seems to have mentioned it on my flist yet:
Michael Jackson? Well, I guess I would have cared a lot more about this like 20 years ago.

Today,

I made the best gnocchi i've ever made. It was almost as good as claudio's. Gnocchi is such a touchy-feely kind of thing. I make it almost every day, and it turns out different almost every time. Today's was freaking amazing though. The dough felt like a young woman's breast. Just... awesome.

I've told work that I want to work day and night. Rather than look for a second job, I'll be working around 60ish hours per week at Al Porto, taking charge of pasta. So if you want me, come eat some pasta and visit the kitchen.

Who knows maybe I will even be able to blog about it a bit. Sometimes when I work a lot, I have trouble sleeping.

Hey, on the topic of work, a few things. I got to work with ramps for the first time ever last week. (or was it the week before?) Bourdain loves these things, but I'd never seen them available. The flavour is like a very strong garlic mixed with green onion. Very cool. I made Claudio's gorgonzola cream sauce, only I used the ramps instead of leeks.

Claudio's Gorgonzola Cream Sauce:
2 Leeks, Julienned
Gorgonzola, about 1 cup
About 2 cups cream
Olive oil, Butter, S+P

Sweat the leeks in the butter and olive oil. When they are translucent, add the gorgonzola and push it into the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Season with a tiny bit of salt, and a generous pinch of black pepper. Keep working the gorgonzola, pushing and stirring until it is melted. Now add the cream. Stir occasionally on low heat until it thickens slightly. Careful not to let it boil over.

Anyway, this sauce is really good with ramps instead of leeks. Unfortunately we couldn't seem to sell any. :(

Tonight I will probably be making some kind of morel mushroom sauce. Drool...

Here's a culinary inspiration for you! Chicken skin... ON PIZZA! :EVIL LAUGH: Now that is crazy CRAZY delicious.

Musically, I am really really digging this pop stream album that stephanie sent me. Epic psytrance ftw. I don't think I've heard an album this epic since Infected's Classical Mushroom back in 2000. Very good.

I've purchased(!) CATraxx for organizing my music collection. It is super awesome. So customizable. I've pretty easily integrated harmonic mixing support, as well as adding a custom field for BPM decimal, since not every track is an integer beats per minute. Now I just need ink for the printer so I can print out my new, standardized labels for my CD wallet.

OMG, this pop stream track is SO GOOD. EPIC PSY WOO!

oh. my.. goodness...
words fail me.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcabain/sets/72157619866619545/

There are more... go look! oh man...

Although, i guess I've been having a lot of best weekends ever lately. This one started out with pasta domination on Friday night. Always good to leave work on a positive note, and banging out 100+ pastas in a few hours and getting lots of a compliments from the dining room is definitely what I call a positive note.

After that, I brought about 10 coworkers to Organix, where another 10-20 friends were there to meet me. It was there that I played these songs:
( Set list from Friday )

It really really was my best ever set at Organix. You can download a recording of the mix from sunkid.ca. By about the 4th track, people were pretty much just screaming for every new twist, every new sample. It was really really gratifying. Almost 100% of that music is brand new too, stuff I've never tried out on a crowd before. A few people in attendance had gotten a sneak preview if they had been at Andrew Haan's house the weekend previous, where I tried some of the tracks out at the afterparty from Stephanie's set. BTW, the recording on sunkid.ca isn't a live recording, it is a reconstruction after the fact. That's why the encore starts right away, instead of having half a minute of silence while everybody cheers before I put on the last track.

Anyway, to say it was a success would be a huge understatement.

On Saturday I got up early (11AM) and headed for Wreck beach. It always takes longer to get ready for the beach than you expect. I can't really understand why but it took from 11AM until after 3PM to hit the sand. I met up with Nick, Aurora, Jules, Saf, Via, Adam and a bunch more people there and proceeded to have (slightly) too much to drink. Jeska arrived too. Getting wrecked on wreck is great. :)

Once the sun started to dip, we headed out and rora and nick invited us over to hang out for a bit. On the way we got more wine, and then they took us to a fantastic vegetarian restaurant on Main called The Foundation (or Foundry or something).

At Aurora and Nick's we watched Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Is it too feminine to say that I swoon for Carl? So good. Jeska and I crashed for a bit there then went home for more sleep.

Yesterday was Car Free Vancouver day, and we heard that there were 40 blocks closed off from car traffic in Kitsilano. Nick and Aurora and I decided to investigate. Super-silly adventures ensued. It turns out that those 40 blocks were scattered randomly throughout kits. We ambled all around, making fun of yuppies and yelling at cars and managed to find 11 of the 40 blocks. Oh and some absolutely AMAZING Okanagan strawberries. Yes! Strawberries so good, you can be admiring the visual beauty of one and then find yourself surprised to be eating it before consciously deciding to nom.

Anyway, after 4 or 5 hours of walking around kits, we get word from Julie that she's at the commercial drive car free day, so we decide to head over there. One crowded and uncomfortable bus ride later, we arrived at the huge street party. Commercial drive day is awesome. There was a dance party playing pretty decent electro and breaks. Hanging out there, we ran into Jules and some other friends. Jeska decided to take a break from her homework and come have supper with us.

We TRIED to go to a really REALLY cool seeming restaurant that I discovered on the drive called Lime. Lime is a Japanese-Spanish fusion restaurant. DO WANT! Unfortunately they were closing up early, so we'll have to go there another time. Instead we went to the Memphis Blues BBQ house on the drive for BBQ poutine. French fries with cheese, pulled bbq pork, and bbq sauce. :drool: I'm actually salivating right now just writing about it. Oh man, it was even better than it sounds.

Anyway yeah, so that was pretty much the weekend.

How was your weekend? :)

Am I EVER excited for my set tomorrow at Organix. This will be one to remember, I predict.

Art of Noize and Psionic Riot are two CD compilations that are kicking my head in lately. If you come to Organix tomorrow night, I'll show you why. I'll show you ALL why. muahaahhahahahahaha! (evil laugh)

... is the best worst movie I think i've ever seen.
EDIT:
or is it the worst best movie i've ever seen?
...
no wait- it's just the worst movie i've ever seen. it crosses the terrible line twice. so bad it's good.... then worse to truely awful.... then even WORSE to what is truly a masterpiece in ver cinema

What do you all think of the logo I just made for irken kitties? IK is the DJ affiliation that Safiire made up for himself, and then I asked if I could join.


Also, check out my new DJ photo:


Ooh, and if you're really into cyber-stalking me (or you just want some killer tunes), you can download an edit of the set that I played on the weekend: sunkid - Sunrise at Valacirca, May 2009

In any case, you definitely should come out to Organix on the 12th! I got booked on Monday, and am filled with excitement. Hence the new demo/dj pic/irken kitties logo, etc.

What a fantastic weekend. I wish I could pepper my post with images so as to better convey the awesomeness of Valacirca. Julie and I rented a 15 passenger van to take people to the party and we got underway around 7 on Friday night. Critical Mass definitely made the process of picking people up downtown very tricky. Note to critical mass participators: You're not making many friends when you screw over rush hour traffic. Just sayin'...

It was all good once we got underway though. In the end we left with eight happy party goers. We popped in raliyn's new demo CD that he made specially for Valacirca and headed over the beautiful Lion's Gate Bridge. Fantastic soundtrack for a journey like this. He and I talked about DJing a bit. His first demo got recorded like my first few. Practicing the same mix, over and over until the best possible timing is found. I told him that he needs to check out MixMeister, which is perfect for finding those platonic ideal mixes that you want for your demo.

We stopped in Squamish to get some supplies, and met up with a couple of travellers who were very obviously on their way to Valacirca. "You guys need a ride to Valacirca?" "Really? That would be amazing!" "Hop in!"
Oh it was a good omen for the weekend, to be sure.

We finally arrived just as it got dark, which made setting up our camp a bit more difficult, but no problem. The tent that glapaloopscap and I borrowed from Lisa is SO awesome. Super cozy and nice in the night (especially with the tent lamp that she also lent us) and it converts into such an airy wonderful little comfy bug shelter during the day- almost like a veranda or gazebo or something.

Meanwhile we are right next to Julie and her camping set up is EPIC. Camping TABLE FTW. Not to mention food and stove and chairs and Space Tribe Banner:

Yes, mandelbrots in the forest. By nightfall on Saturday we had two up, because railyn has one too. I want one SO bad!

Where to begin with the party though? I mean some highlights:

Sitting on the couch(!) and watching as tattiana_mai first arrives, like a princess from a fairytale.

Visiting with my new coworker at his campsite and getting some chorizo. Every time I saw him I think he gave me another beer. Woo!

Rebecca, the EPIC hula girl. I think that it wouldn't be too much to sell tickets for $25 just to watch her play, never mind the rest of the show. Just wow. (She actually reminds me quite a bit of durdaana. Maggie, do you hula? Maybe you should!)

Musical highlights- LSG - Train of Thought 1.2, Black and White - Retro Active (thinking of you, Elfinity), a track called We Want More that Chris played, and of course my entire sunrise set.

Giving away watermelon slices and blowing people's minds. "How did you know that I NEEDED watermelon just then???" :)

Sneaking away with jeska for some hanky panky. FUN! :D

"Nice talking with you Laurent, I've got to go. There is a mango with my name on it" "Alright man, go nuts." "... :groan:" I love puns. :)

Meeting a comicbook super hero, Protoflash! (or was it metaflash?) His battles against his arch nemesis Scary Tooth Man were entertainment all weekend.

So many amazingly hot hippy chicks. :drool:

Jumping Pics! I saw so many of these before, but never knew that it is Julie's hobby. I got a great one of me. I will have to remember to post it here when I get a copy from her.

Going for Vera burgers with our new friend (and neighbor, as it turns out) Wendy as soon as we got back in town.

The real highlight of the weekend for me though was my set. I played at 5:30AM just as things were starting to get light, and the sun's rise was imminent. This timeslot is, to me, absolutely crucial to the success of a party. Actually, not really the success, but if a party is going to be memorable- if people are going to think about it 5, 10, 20 years later, then the music that is playing for sunrise has to be precisely right. And so with this onerous responsibility upon me, I procrastinated and just sort of listened to music for the last few months, and didn't really work on my set. I really am bad when it comes to that.

Finally I got around to it last week. Unfortunately, I ended up working doubles most days, and then all my free time organizing the party bus. By the time we arrived on Friday night I knew approximately a third of my set, maybe less. But I brought my laptop, and I spent about 2 hours on Saturday afternoon, hiding in the van, working on my plans. It was during that 2 hour session that my set took shape. Allow me to present to you my list from yesterday morning:
( Click for tracklisting )

To say that it was successful would be an understatement. I am THRILLED that straight-up goa trance can still rock the hell out of crowds of people. The two tracks I played from ektoplasm's Pyramidal Transcendence compilation really gave a fantastic mystical uplifting feel, and that was extremely well recieved, and I got mad props from several of the other DJs in attendence for dropping Astral Projection's classic Mahadeva. Not the 1996, nor the 98 remix, the original classic from 1994. Truly the best version of that track, IMO.

The real measure of my success though, in my book, was how many people were asking my DJ name after my set. To me, when somebody asks my DJ name, it says "You were good enough that I would come out to a show if I saw your name on a flyer." That is a huge compliment, and I usually get a few people each time I play out, and I love it. Yesterday though I had TONS of people ask me. Awesome.

OK, enough bragging. The bottom line was, I love Laurent's parties, and I can't wait for Between Worlds II. I hope even more people come out for that one. :)