The WordPress app on my iPhone seems to be well and truly dead ever since I upgraded it– it just sits in an endless loop, attempting to contact my blog. Apparently this is a known issue. As much as I move around, this has made it harder again for me to keep posting. Luckily the Evernote app was also recently upgraded, and now has the ability to create and save new text notes right in the phone. (This filled my need for a syncable text editor that is free and doesn’t suck, a need that should not have been so hard to fill.) So for now it appears that mobile blogging will have a few steps added to the process. At least it’s still doable. I need something to do on my commute in between episodes of the Stanford iPhone programming podcast.

It’s been two weeks for me at March Entertainment now, and I’m having a great time. It’s nice to actually be able to animate, to apply what I’ve spent the last year and a bit learning at Animation Mentor. Things aren’t quite settled there yet– we had hardware upgrades done on Friday– so next week is when things will likely hop into full gear. We did get to see the latest cut of the movie this week, so everyone has a better idea of how our work fits into the whole.

Outside of work I’ve actually managed to sleep, a bit. I keep having wickedly strange dreams, some of which have guest-starred people I haven’t thought about or talked to in years. The one about the truck-sized turkey still takes the cake, but there’ve been others that came close. I think that as much as I say I don’t get stressed, I’m only able to dream when work gets out of my subconscious’ way. I guess that means I’m feeling pretty relaxed right now.

Oh, I wanted to mention the latest album by The Dears, Missiles. There’s a song on it, Crisis 1&2, that I heard on the CBC Radio 3 podcast. Soon after it finished I rewound and played the song over again about a dozen times. It’s been a while since I was hit that hard by a single piece of music. I highly recommend you head out and find it. The rest of the CD isn’t bad, but that one song is transcendant.

Hmm… One more thing. Anybody know of a good, easy-to-understand tutorial on Direct X shader programming? I have a feeling I’m going to need it soon.

I’m finally downloading the Windows 7 Beta right now. I tried a few times yesterday under Vista, as my desktop is only booted into XP when I have a straggling program that won’t run in the newer OS, and as I’ve said before on my blogs I quite like Vista. Every time I tried to download the beta, however, the ActiveX component I needed to get it going wouldn’t install.

So I booted into XP and the download is now running happily. I guess Microsoft still has a few things to work out.

After the last MacBook Pro fiasco and reinstalling from my Time Machine backup, Mail decided to fail on me. Again. It acted like I was a new user and lost all my old messages. Thankfully I haven’t deleted messages from my account on the server in a long time, so I can just re-download them, but this is a serious problem with the way Mail works that has bugged me for years. I switched this morning to Thunderbird, which I’ve gotten used to at work and which, while not pretty or as feature-rich as Mail, should suffice.

Wonder what that’s going to do to my iPhone syncing, but I suppose that’s a problem for another day. For now, back to work.

I dropped off my MacBook Pro — again — for, hopefully, a fix and an end to my issues with the graphics card. They also fixed my iPhone, or rather, replaced it with a new unit and swapped out the sim card.

I’d forgotten how nice a fully functional iPhone is. Mine’s been busted for so long I’d gotten used to the lack of my ringer off switch.

My sister flies out tomorrow. We got her to watch Ms. Pettigrew Lives For A Day (one of those lovely movies you have to see if you haven’t, the kind you keep on hand in case of rainy days, bad news, or emotional meltdowns), and that got us on the topic of Lee Pace and how much we’re mourning The Piemaker, which got us on the topic of Bryan Fuller. She’s an IMDB nut, not unlike our father, so we now know that Fuller’s had his hands in a lot of shows we’ve both enjoyed, like Star Trek Voyager and Dead Like Me. Much as I enjoy Heroes, I find it odd that it survives and the more interesting shows he’s worked on over the years have, not failed, but been killed off.

Makes me wonder when the entertainment sea-change the Internet was supposed to bring about will actually arrive. I feel at times that we’re close; The Guild and Pure Pwnage prove that smaller narratives can be possible on tight budgets. Sanctuary must have been successful in order to spawn the Sci-fi channel series. But when will we get that truly break-out bit of entertainment from an indie studio? Something everyone tunes in to watch through their browsers, because it’s as good or better than what’s on TV?

There have been a lot of shows in England that started with only a six-show season. Maybe that’s not a bad target for a compelling, 22-minute Internet series. Now’s about the time for this to hit, with all the good shows getting taken off the air in lieu of reality programs and Howie Do It.

Just need someone like Felicia Day of Joss Whedon to lead the charge.

It’s going to take a bit of time before I move my blog properly from the old Outtro to its new home here at SugarAndCyanide.com. Please bear with me as we might be under construction for a while!