Improv Report Lesson 1

Last week I signed up for Improv 101 at the Impatient Theatre Company. It cost CAD $150 for 8 lessons, once a week. Last night I ventured out to the first lesson. Here are my impressions.

The studio is located on Queen St W. at Roncesvalles. After some searching I found a plain door wedged between two storefronts with barely a sign. Good thing I was on time. 6:30pm. A flight of stairs led me to the studio lobby. I walked into a small room where a few people had assembled together. Someone that resembled an instructor greeted me. I forgot the name almost instantly, later to be reminded that it's Erin. Erin Lovely.

As quickly as I forgot her name, we were directed to another room. The Green room I think it was called, had chairs around the walls so everyone quickly sat down. Across from me were two men talking and smirking. I couldn't quite identify their nationality but soon found out they were Iranian: Jubin and Amir. In all there were only about 6 people so far. I was underwhelmed. Gradually more people showed up. Just as I was getting comfortable in my chair Erin decides to move us to another room. And so we follow to the Blue room.

The Blue room has, no surprise, blue walls. It's now about 6:45 and we are Jubin, Amir, Steven, Adiam, Giovanni, Dahlia, Neelam, Heather, Jenny. Erin hands out two pieces of paper. A course overview and a disclaimer. She reads the disclaimer aloud for the next 15 minutes. Each of us also gets a pass card for free show admissions, which we are encouraged to attend.

The rest of the class is a series of games, a 15 minute lunch break, more games. Finally, 3 hours later we share what we liked best about the class and what we took away.

Game 1: Zip, Zap, Zup
We all stand in a circle. Someone starts with yelling Zip and at the same time clapping hands in the direction of someone across. That someone across has to repeat with Zap. And then Zup and again Zip and so on.

Game 2: Zip, Zap, Zup with increasing loudness
By the end we're all yelling at the top of our lungs. And the window is open.

Game 3. Zip, Zap, Zup with throwing objects
Same as before but throwing or kicking imaginary objects instead of clapping.

Game 4: Slow-mo Samurai
Lights off. Pretend we're all samurai with big swords. Slowly retrieve the sword from the back with two hands and kill everyone around you. You can block with your elbows. If you're hit, slowly die. You can attack as you're dying.

Game 5: Chinese Throwing Stars
Stand in a circle and throw imaginary chinese stars at each other. Catch the stars with a clap and throw back at someone else. Add sound effects. If you fail you go in the middle of the circle and everyone throws stars at you and you die very slowly.

Game 6: Mnemonic Devices
We sit in a circle and go clockwise thinking up nicknames for each other. Giovanni is Don Giovanni of the Arts. Dahlia is Dahlicious. Neelam is decided on Vaneelam. Jenny is Je ne sais quoi. I am Gorillia. Amir is A-Miracle. Jubin is Ju-Ju-Bean. Steven is Steve-o-Meiser. Adiam becomes Adiamo.
Each of us then has to recite everyone's aliases.

Game 7: I love ___
One by one we stand up in the middle of the room and say what we love for 2 minutes. I got carried away here and mentioned some non PG-rated stuff.
I enjoyed this game because there was so much support and positive energy in the room. Audience had to clap and yell "yay" if they also shared your love.

Game 8: Panels
3 teams of 4 go on virtual stage and pretend to be a panel of experts on a topic chosen by the audience. Erin, our instructor is the panel moderator.
The topics were: Snake Caesarean, Nosepickers, Animal Paws. I was Dr. Strange, an expert on cataloguing animal paws around the world. I need lots of improvement here.

how to read the sms text messages backed up by iTunes from your iPhone 3G 3.0

at the Terminal:

$ sqlite3 Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup/$most_recent_entry/3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28.mddata
(replace $most_recent_entry with the name of the most recent directory)

sqlite> .schema message
(this will show the structure for the message table)

Then you can ask things like:
sqlite> select * from message where text like '%days%';

Ubuntu 9.04 and ATI cards

I upgraded one of my linux boxes from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04. Everything went well but the Xserver wouldn't start. Turns out there's a big problem with ATI deprecating some graphics cards or something to that effect. My card is an ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro.

Solution:

• start Ubuntu in safe mode
• sudo apt-get remove xorg-driver-fglrx
• sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
• reboot

Other than that hiccup, Ubuntu 9.04 is indeed faster. The display is drawing much faster over VNC.

Good thing my other linux desktop is Nvidia.

Reference:
ATI Graphics Cards and Jaunty: What Works?

Deploy to your iPhone without Apple's provisioning profiles, in two steps

You will need a mac with OS X 10.5.6 or higher and a jailbroken iPhone with 2.2. Jailbreak using quickpwn

1. obtain a self signing identity as per Apple's directions, use the name "iPhone developer"
2. save the following to Info.plist.patch
   

   54a55,58
   > PROVISIONING_PROFILE_ALLOWED
   > NO
   > PROVISIONING_PROFILE_REQUIRED
   > NO

   
   Then:

   patch /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Info.plist Info.plist.patch

3. (skip if you used "iPhone developer" in step 1) Open your project and go to (menu) Project > Edit Project Settings. In the list of properties, find “Code Signing Identity” > “Any iPhone OS Device” and click in the empty box. Assuming there are no entries in the menu, click “Other” and type in the same name you used to generate the code signing certificate above. Hit OK and close that settings window. This setting should persist in future projects.

You should now be able to build for Device using Xcode. scp the .app to root@your_iphone_name:/Applications/ and reboot the iPhone.

I have collected the links I used in my research at http://delicious.com/nurey/iphone+deploy

Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 on Ubuntu

I bought a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 today for a linux box (Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex). My preliminary research on this webcam found a few people getting it to work out of the box with Intrepid.

My story was anything but. The webcam did get detected by whatever hotplug manager du jour is for Ubuntu. However Skype test call wasn't working. After a few hours of google searching -- there goes my Saturday -- I fixed the problem and here are my notes.

• sudo apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio (another sound server du-jour)
• System/Preferences/Sessions, uncheck Pulse Audio
  
• System/Preferences/Sound, set everything to ALSA, set Sound Capture to USB Device OSS
• Skype/Options/Sound Devices, Sound In -> USB Device (plughw), Sound Out -> Default, Ringing -> Default

Now video is flickering. Very annoying. I have an ATI card with compiz running. Fix is to turn off "TexturedVideo" in xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
   Identifier "Configured Video Device"
   Driver "fglrx"
   Option "TexturedVideo" "off"
EndSection

iPhone goodness

So I finally got an iPhone for myself a week ago and it continues to amaze me. The amount of useful apps in the App Store is astounding. The features I'm using most often so far are the push email, sms, the camera for taking snapshots of books I'd like to find time to read, youtube, podcasts, and of course visual voicemail is just awesome. Some of the free apps I've downloaded and actually using include:

• Forex OTG for checking foreign exchange rates and charts (room for improvement there)
• Shazam for finding the name of the song playing on the radio
• Urbanspoon for restaurant picking
• AroundMe for finding a starbucks near me
• i.TV for TV schedules
• Twitteriffic for twitter
• Google Earth
• Google app for voice activated google search and google reader
• 1password for password syncing with my mac
• iTalk for recording notes
• To Do's for todo tracking. Though this is proving to be too basic. I might try Things or go all out for OmniFocus
• Fring for Skype and AIM
• MyMote for controlling my MythTV box
• FlyCast for online radio
• TouchTerm for ssh
• Apple Remote
• Evernote
• Tap Tap
• BigOven for recipe search

There's only a few apps I've actually bought and one of them is Ocarina. Just amazing.

So back in July I placed an order over the phone with Fido for an iPhone 3G 16GB. It's now October 11 and no iPhone in sight. I called them two or three times. Yesterday they said I will get it by October 30th.

Meanwhile I was able to walk into a Fido Kiosk on September 30th and walk out with an iPhone 3G.