Templates

It's a no-brainer
Templates – an interesting concept. They show up everywhere, sometimes in surprising places.

Right now I use an array of different kinds of software to do things (legitimate things!) for publishing, the web, and photography. Every piece of software has an option to use, or make, a template.

Templates come in handy (not quite duct-tape handy, but close) when you know you're going to be faced with repetitive motions in how the document, web page, or photo is going to look. If there are 15 boring/drudgery things you need to do to each page (or photo) before you can move on to do more interesting things to it (still keeping it seemly and legal here) ... making a template for the boring shit makes sense.

Some software comes with pre-made general templates. Every type of software has a unique name for the types of templates they deploy. Web design programs call them "CSS" (Cascading Style Sheets). The best page-design program going, Adobe InDesign, calls them Master Pages. Templates for photos in Photoshop are actually more like "pre-sets" for actions you might want to regularly deploy on photos of the same ilk.

And in life we have templates, too. From the time we're old enough to wobble around and get our sticky

No. Not even once. 

hands into things we're not meant to, parents attempt to apply "templates" to tweak this pesky behaviour. They're more like rules and regs ... but you can consider "don't paint the dog blue", "don't stick forks in electrical outlets (power-points down here)", and "don't feed the DVD player peanut butter sandwiches" all types of templates. Psychological ones, to be sure.

So not only do templates make life easier (eliminating the repeating, savagely-boring drudgery of common tasks), they also prevent you from getting a total beat-down from continuing to do stupid things into your adult life ... like jamming food into DVD players.

My merry beer-blogging mate Don over at Brew-Ha-Ha has been noticing another type of template in play these days. It's a kind of "greeting form letter" for women on a dating site (POF) to use in lieu of any original idea or concept they may have trouble conjuring.

And here's the rumpus.

Can templates make things TOO easy for us ... to the point of eradicating any semblance of original thought or creativity?

(And ironically, as I typed "semblance",  I hit a key wrong and a typo ensued ... and I instantly got the tell-tale red squiggle under the word ... so I immediately just right-clicked on the word to get the correct spelling. I'm an editor, professionally ... so I should have been able to fix the spelling myself, without being aided and abetted by a mechanical spell-check 'genie' in the software. But I don't get paid for writing this blog. So I cheated and did the easy thing ...)

Now where was I. Oh yes. Don notes the uncanny predominance of the prefix "Hey!" followed by the iconic happy-face-smiley thingy, ":-)" appearing at the start of an alarming number of POF greetings, from women, aimed at him. Hey, he's a hip, happening dude, with a cheeky twinkle in his eye, and a 10,000 kilowatt smile – so ladies on the 'POF prowl' are prone to flocking to him to say hello. Or in this case, "Hi! :-)".

And he posed the question to me just the other day: doesn't using a template in a situation like this – where you're meant to be coming off "as yourself" in a meet-and-greet online situation – cheating to the point of it actually detracting from your first-impression attractiveness?

Two Kates, no waiting.

One thing's for sure. When Don reads an intro from someone on that site that starts out with an original idea ... those ones stand out.

Certainly, women looking like Kate Upton or Kate Beckinsale (left) helps a lot in these instances, too – for leaving an instant and lasting impression on a guy. But we're just sayin' ... dating sites may not be the best place to deploy a template.

Embarrassing wetness from above
So the wild and wacky weather weirdness of the world continues ... this time (this week) it was Toronto's turn to get slammed and soaked with a metric ass-ton of rain. Heaps more than usual, it seems ... to the point of turning subway trains into submarines.

Roads were flooded that don't normally collect lake-sized amounts of water.  And in one filmed YouTube incident, a water snake ... on a train ... (no word if Samuel L. Jackson was on hand to toss a few "MU'PHUKKA!"s at it).

"Say 'IT'S RAINING', again!"

Homes by the multi-thousand were hosed down, flooded, and rendered powerless. People climbed to the top level of GO Trains to escape the rising tides. People leapt out of car windows to splash around and see if, in fact, the water was really that wet.

Two weeks prior, it was Calgary's turn to deal with the mighty wet fist of nature, with torrential downpours, floods, and overflowing rivers, to the point of the evacuation of many people. A friend in Austria said it was pretty much like that all spring there too.

We got it here in Welly too – see my last Blog about being sans electricité for eight days.

A nice reminder from the natural world that we can get too used to our "life templates", if you will ... build a house and put trains on a track all you like. Sometimes big storms can slam down on you and take all that away for a while.

Hey, at least it's made almost everyone (except the Toronto Star zealot reporters) forget about big, fat, brain-damaged, drug-hoovering,  drunken redneck mayor Rob Ford for a while!

Big, fat, rich crybabies
According to some fans of the incredibly esoteric rich-guys' game of yacht racing, The Americas Cup is happening now in San Francisco.

Except the only ones racing are the Kiwis. And that's the rumpus there ...

Ahoy, Fattie McRich-Swine!

Technically, or by definition, a "race" is something involving two or more things, people or animals trying to get to the finish line first.

The big, fat, rich bastards who normally partake of this yawner of an event are mostly NOT partaking right now because ... well, no one really knows why. It's something to do with a piece of gear that either conforms to the rules. Or doesn't. Who the fuck cares, really ...

Anyway, some rich guy got 'shirty' about this concept, and then some other members of this rich-fat-bastard fraternity thought they better get their noses out of joint, too (and I'm not stereotypically leaving women out of this story – yacht racing is 100% a rich fat white MEN'S colossal waste of time). Then the rest of these wealthy weasels with big boats got worked up and waved their fat little arms in the air, stomped a few times, and decided not to play either.

Yeah we get it. You're rich. And on a boat.

Which resulted in just the Kiwis willing to front up, get in the boat, and go sail around the course. Alone.

Shockingly, nothing broke on the boat this time, so they won (no kidding here ... a mast snapped in two, one of the last times these rich swine got together to waggle their penises at each other – oops, I mean race expensive yachts around a big wet circle. That did cause the Kiwis to lose, and rather dramatically, that year).

So the Kiwis are winning this year's America's Cup. Yay, I guess.

Beer fest time again!
Nothing absurd about this tidbit of fun, at all. I'm including it here because ... well, we need a bit of sensible, proper fun amid all the weirdness. And nothing says 'fun' like me and a bunch of pals amassing at a beer fest.

There's a small one tonight in the Malthouse bar – an IPA* Challenge. A good enough excuse as any to drink some fine IPAs. Next weekend, the SOBA** Midwinter*** Beer Fest is upon us. Always a fun time, this year it's in a slightly larger venue, so more funsters (and brewers offering fun!) can attend.

THEN, early in August, it's the big Beervana event, in the Caketin*~. This is the largest fest of all here in New Zealand, and should prove to be a good drunken time. How could it not ... the plan is to provide a LOT of beer all under one big roof. Add fun-loving beer drinkers. Stir. It's a simple plan ... and these are the ones that usually work out as planned, with little or no risk of failure.

And there you have it – this week's notable absurdities, and impending fun.

Yours, in beery anticipation,

* IPA – India Pale Ale. Really hoppy tasty ale. Yum. The challenge is, how many can you try before you realise the challenge has now become ... what ones HAVEN'T I tried yet?!
** SOBA – Society Of Beer Advocates, a small but dedicated group of funsters here who (guess what?) like good craft beer. A lot.
*** Midwinter  – July means it's winter here in the antipodes. And more precisely, it's about the middle of the season. Hence ... the timing and naming of this fest.
*~ Caketin – This is the nom de mockery of the big sports stadium here, Westpac Trust Stadium. It is thusly named as it looks for all the world like a giant cake tin. It's where pro rugby is played, and some big concerts happen ... and events. In this case, a big beer swilling type thang. Come on down and get yer swerve on!

Must reads!
I've already mentioned Don Redmond's Brew-Ha-ha! G'wan, have a read! It's all about beer and fun. Can you take the pace? Also be sure to tune in to Glenn Hendry's Shwa Stories! An excellent look a the goings-on in Oshawa, Ontario.