...become an American spy

WWII, Berlin, a German defector and an American spy.
Check out this leaked on-set photo of me as Robert Mitchell, and see Out Of Berlin at the Render This! film festival in St Catharines Oct. 1 2010.

EDIT: I also took this photo.

...geeked out my mac

The movie geeks in the crowd will appreciate this little program I picked up, called Blackout. It's billed as a screen brightness manager, giving the mac user more control than the simple brightness bar, like a spotlight that follows your cursor around, or a super-dimmer for low-light applications.
I love it for it's "soft edges" mode, presumably meant to reduce the ambient glare coming off the sides of your screen, unintentionally giving your mac the coolest vignette ever. Check it out.



The application is available here. The license costs $9, and there's definitely no way around the payment process. Definitely no information you might need in the screenshot.

Yes, the corners of the screen are completely black, and yes I do have to kind of feel around for the spotlight icon, but as I understand it, G-string bikinis are extremely uncomfortable. The link between those two non-sequiters?

there's a price to pay for looking amazing.

Duch Dillinger is a young female rapper out of Toronto. Last year she played at Scenefest '09 in St Catharines, which, as I understand it, is an impressive feat, as with a total 160 bands playing, there were only a handful of hip hop artists in attendance, and she was among them.

Recently, she's launched a new EP, Mrs. Anonymous. The lyrics are clever and the music is consistently driving and engaging.
But music aside, her marketing is fantastic.

Dillinger has released her new EP as a free download from her website. This is a bold move, unheard of since the latter days of Harvey Danger. In traditional economic thinking, this is suicide, literally giving your product away for free, but, as cases like this continue to prove, there are other factors at work here. Dillinger has chosen to waive ALL of her front-end profits in favor of the increased publicity, a much less tangible benefit than cash. The payoff comes from market saturation, as it is much more beneficial to have your song playing on as many different speakers as possible, than a small number that paid. The tangible benefits down the line will come in the form of increased attendance to her shows, increased internet buzz(hey, it's working!), and a much larger and more established fan base waiting for her next album to drop.

...described myself visually

I think it's pretty accurate. my arms are way more vein-y IRL though. Template below.

...outwitted a computer virus

This conversation began earlier today, and it almost had me fooled, until i realized that it wasn't really so much talking to me as at me. This is perhaps the smartest computer virus I've ever spoken with. Note its last line, there's actually a scripted response for when the virus's humanity is challenged.

...updated the list of animals I've caught with my bare hands

-Praying Mantis(new!)
-Bat(new!)
-Frog
-Goose
-Seagull
-Porcupine(next time, gloves)
-Catfish
-Mouse
-Garter snake
-Unidentified snake
-Robin
-Rabbit
-Duck