While I look forward to the start of a new decade and all that comes with it, I am somewhat sad to see this decade of zeroes end. It was the kind of decade where everything fit into place. I turned twenty in 2000, was twenty-five in 2005, and end it at twenty-nine in 2009. As of tomorrow that nice alignment fades away and as the twenty-xxs continue on I, in a month’s time, begin my thirties.

The 00s began on a tremendous low. I was still a teenager, a freshman at the University of Toronto, living with my parents in suburban Mississauga, broke and broken. I was miserable, newly uncertain of my future, and hopelessly lost. Before that first year was out, just ahead of December’s winter exam season, I effectively gave up. I stopped going to school, skipped all my exams, and abandoned all of my courses. Thousands of dollars, most of it in the form of scholarships, went to the shitter.

It could have been the setup for a devastating decade, but a month later, I managed to find, without even looking, a job at a local internet start-up as a Flash developer at a time when Flash was exploding thanks to newly released version 5. It was nothing but luck, I was in the right place (dreamless.org) at the right time, but it was the defining moment of the decade for me. Everything that came after came because of that. In the years that followed, I expanded my web skills, built up almost nine years of industry experience, and developed a diverse portfolio of projects and brands. My entire decade revolved around work and while I have absolutely no regrets about how it turned out it did mean that I missed out on some things.

That career, if you can call it that, is the reason why I am now in Paris. It is also why, during my four months here, I have seen so little of Paris. I’ve done nothing but sit in front of my MacBook. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for all the people that have hired me and wanted to work with me and thought my work was good. I am thankful that my career has given me the ability to be so independent and autonomous, allowing me to work anywhere I can plug my laptop into the internet. It’s all been great, but as I look back on my life during the last decade and my life during my twenties I see a lot of time and very little living.

That is why I am going through another change of scenery. I’m leaving Paris behind, and its cramped apartments and its excess dust and its hustle and bustle, as I head down to the Cote d’Azur for the winter. As I do so, I plan on leaving all the internet distractions behind. Apart from some loose ends with already committed-to projects, I don’t intend to work. I don’t intend to Tweet much. I don’t intend to surf much. And I don’t intend to write to weblogs.

In many ways this has been the decade of the weblog, and I had been there for the whole of it: as of today this weblog is ten years old. I started a little Blogger.com site back in December 1999 and while it moved around and evolved quite a lot, as has my voice, the essence of it is very much the same as it ever was. Ten years of my life documented on the internet. It’s kind of scary to think about, but mostly kind of mundane. It’s also something that, having existed for a third of my life, feels so completely normal and natural that it’s not anything that I can ever give up. The topics and the interests and the style might change, but once you find your public voice, no matter how few people are listening, you don’t want to lose it. It will continue to be so. I will write and link and create for the next decade and beyond. Bring on the tens!

But in the meantime I’m going to go and attempt to live for once as I try to find my private voice.

This time next week I’m going to be flying over the Atlantic towards Paris. I spent four months in London and Paris last summer and it was great. I didn’t do much of anything, which is why it was so great, but I did start jogging and I read more and I got to know my camera a lot better. Ever since my Canadian return I’ve sworn that I would go back and I’ve been working hard over the last couple of months, perhaps a little too hard, to pay for it. Next week I fulfill that promise.

Last year I was there on a tourist visa. I was required to have a return ticket, I was limited to a short stay, and I was not permitted to work. This year there’s a subtle, but significant, difference: I am traveling on a European passport. More to the point, my flight to Paris next week is one way.

I’d like to say that I have it all planned out, but I really don’t. Apart from a three month commitment with a 150 square foot apartment in the upper 16e, I have no expectations. I hope to continue freelance web work for Toronto companies while I’m there — I’m taking two computers with me; this will be interesting during airport security screenings — which should sustain me for a while, but locally I have no idea what’s going to happen. Will I find freelance work for European agencies? Will I find a job? Will I move to other cities or countries? Will I have any shred of a social life as a foreigner? Or will I burn through all my money accomplishing nothing? Will I be found floating in the Senne one winter day? I don’t know.

That’s the fun of it though; it’s a grand adventure. A great send-off to my long dark twenties. When I will celebrate my thirtieth early next year, wherever I’ll be, it will be with a kind freshness that I could never have in a place that I’ve spent most of my life. I’ve been in a rut for so long I need something drastic in my life to kickstart a new decade. Leaving everything behind to go to another continent is high on the list of “drastic things to do,” so, that.

But the internet will persist wherever I go so, in the end, probably nothing will change. At least I’ll have some nice photos to show for it.

Also known as: “The more photogenic half.” (Part One here.)

Big pictures follow:

Read the rest of this entry…

I walked the Avenue des Champs-Elysees a couple of times, up towards the Arc de Triomphe and back down to Place de Concorde and Tuileries, covering both sides of the perpetually busy road. The Avenue was what I expected it to be: lined end to end with designer shops, restaurants, tourists and image-obsessed locals. A couple of Starbucks rounds out the picture. In all my time there I stopped in two shops, the FNAC (French Best Buy, basically) and the Virgin Megastore. This says a lot about me.

The shelves in the DS and PSP “jeux video” sections were filled with most of the same crap that I’d be avoiding in Canada. I did find a copy of “Dr. Reiner Knizia’s Brainbenders” for the DS, a Europe only release I was eager to purchase, but the box was entirely in French which made me question whether the game was too. It would be safe to imagine that it would have multiple language options, but I didn’t want to take the chance; I’ll buy it in London. On other racks I noticed various “English Training” games for the DS which I thought quaint. I considered buying one for the novelty of it.

Is there anything new on the portable systems worth playing? Or is it a complete mess of licensed games and rehashes? Disappointing.

Thankfully, the music sections in these shops were quite good and I spent most of my time there. They’re not much different than the flagship Zavvi or HMV shops you can find in the UK or Canada, but it’s interesting to note the few minor regional differences. There was a section devoted to French bands and singers, of course, but it goes beyond that. In Canada, if you were looking for an Aphex Twin album you’d look in the “Electronic” section; in the UK it’s under “Dance”; here in Paris, it’s in “Techno.” To my untrained ears it seemed like an awfully specific label for a section that contained everything from Squarepusher and Justice to Air and Crystal Castles, bands that I’d hardly call “techno.”

Right next to “techno” was another rack labelled “trip-hop” and a wall of nothing but “House.” I wondered for a moment where I would find Portishead’s third album — their first two are universally classified as “trip-hop” but “Third” is its own thing altogether — and I think it saw it in yet another distinct section. “Electronic” might be vague but when I go looking for an album in the HMV on Yonge Street in Toronto, I know where to look. Here, I’d have to browse through three or four different sections.

There was also an entire wall dedicated to “lounge compilations.” This too seemed correct for France.

The final thing I noticed was that both of these retailers had considerably larger “contemporary composer” sections than can be found in similar stores in Canada. However, this could be a case of confirmation bias on my part. My interest in this music has grown recently so I might be noticing it more than I ever did. Ten years ago I was completely unaware of the “electronic” section in my local HMVs (or Sam The Record Man) and now it’s the first place I go. I’ll have to check the shops in Toronto when I get back to see if contemporary composers are as represented there as they are here, but man, I was tempted to get a few CDs for the fear that they might not be.

Unfortunately, the couple of items that I was specifically searching for I could not find. I hoped to find Kap Bambino’s album “Zero Life, Night Vision” seeing as they’re French but when their label says that the album is “sold out” they aren’t kidding. It’s a shame. I understand why artists like that get such a limited print run, but they deserve more exposure in these post-Crystal Castles days, especially since they’re better and, as is typical, they predate them. Alas, it’s not how good you are, it’s who you know.

I didn’t want to leave empty handed so I bought Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians,” went home, hit YouTube and posted this incredible video to my Tumblr.

Thusly summarized it better than I ever could:

what is actually going on here will sound somewhat familiar to those who understand how to modulate sinusoidal waveforms binaurally or have at least learned “beat-matching”. this instance, however, involves the pianist attempting to play one piano at a very precise tempo, while simultaneously (and very minutely) increasing the tempo (based upon a sinusoidal timeline) played on the other piano. thusly bringing the two pianos into, and then out of, phase — thereby never achieving actual synchronicity until the 1st note on each piano being played is matched up again, then the performance drops to 8 notes and the cycle starts all over, then again to 4 notes.

it is also worthy to note that this composition is twenty minutes long in its entirity and is meant to be played by two pianists. the fact that one person can mentally and physically process this is truly astounding.

All in all, it was a worthwhile trek.

I should be writing about Paris, but there isn’t much to say: the food is good, the city is pretty and the girls more so. I’m loving the autumn colours along the many tree-lined boulevards and the equally radiant sunsets in the cool, but pleasant, evenings. Long walks, hundreds of photos, numerous atrocities committed to the French language and crowded, stuffy evening Metro rides home. I’m enjoying the city. What more can be said than that?

Instead, I’ve been writing about the Tokyo Game Show. I have also been deleting what I wrote about it. I had a long diatribe about the Japanese games on show at TGS and about how the games there show perfectly well why Japanese developers are falling behind their Western counterparts, but it wasn’t really working towards any worthwhile conclusion. I didn’t want my disappointment with the high-profile games there to overshadow the few interesting ideas on show, so I scrapped it. Being negative is too easy so here’s a few positives:

Noby Noby Boy – who the hell knows what’s going on there? The indication is that the teaser video is not at all indicative of the gameplay, which makes sense if you remember earlier tech demos, but does it even matter? It’s from the creator of Katamari Damacy and it will likely not contain any angsty demons making snarky remarks. This alone makes it more original than 80% of the games at TGS. (BONUS: the music in the teaser is a reinterpretation of the music from the classic Namco game, Metro-Cross.)

Gomibako – a dropping block puzzler in which each block is a random piece of junk with various physical properties. The trash interacts with each other in various ways (can be crushed, ignited) which makes for a unique twist on the standard formula.

Again – yeah, it’s a corny trailer but it’s a new adventure game for the DS that is definitely trying to do something fresh. It remains to be seen if the mechanics in the game are worthwhile, but the idea of having the past on one screen and the present on the other within a detective story is worthy of credit. It’s also quite unique stylistically. A little cornball too, but that’s alright.

That, apart from “Meteos Wars” and “Lumines Supernova”, is it. For such a major exhibition, that’s a weak showing. I wonder, then, is it me? Or is it you, Japan? Is that it? Are you that out-of-touch with my Western sensibilities? Or is it I that have changed?

What’s that? You have Western games on show too? “Halo 3: Recon”? “Halo Wars”? “Killzone”? Oh, you’re right then: it is me.

Well, I made it. After an ordeal getting through the Chunnel I arrived in Paris on Monday evening. I’ve been here three whole days and it’s been completely gorgeous. In those three days I’ve had more sunshine than in any given three week period in London. It certainly makes for a more colourful first impression.

My studio is very small but it has a good location (two doors from the Metro, and a block away from another Metro line) and it’s perfectly accessorized. I have internet access again! And a TV (which I haven’t even bothered with) and stereo and free long-distance calling to North America. Awesome. However, with this weather it’d be a waste to make use of any of it so I’ve been out exploring, wandering, taking photos and being a flaneur.

That said, I do have access to the wonders of the internet so I do get see a lot of nerdy stuff again. Thus, I present three French musicians given an increasingly geekier treatment: