Matt Refghi

When I was off seeing a movie recently in a theater, I happened to catch a trailer for Backrooms, a horror movie based on a fictional location popularized on 4chan. Put simply:

The Backrooms are usually portrayed as an impossibly large extradimensional complex of empty rooms, accessed by exiting reality.

Watching the trailer itself will give you a better sense of what I’m referring to:

So not only is it about discovering an endless series of rooms and corridors, but what’s in there is familiar… but also slightly off. The way things are arranged generally doesn’t make sense… which makes the environment unsettling at its core and thus, a great backdrop upon which to base a horror movie. The fact that there’s something creepy moving around down there only adds to it.

Beyond the horror, what immediately piqued my interest was this idea of exploring a vast hidden space and more importantly, the process I’d undergo to fully map the space. I would love to be in that position and to bring some order to what was otherwise a complex maze. Ideally without something stomping around looking to slaughter me.

So anyway, I knew I had to see it. And though streaming has done quite a bit to eliminate theaters, for certain movies, I still go out of my way to see them in person for the full experience. Given that Backrooms wasn’t shot in IMAX or anything like that, I knew that I could simply go to a familiar, easy-to-access theater from my past – it was a particular Cinema Guzzo theater that I had gone to countless times before. However, it had been so long since I’d gone that the theater had been sold and had new management – and was now operating under the brand Cine Starz, so it’d be my first time seeing what changed.

And so I organized something with a friend, and on the day of, I arrived before he did, and walked in. I was immediately taken aback:

Immediately, I was struck by the fact that there was no ticket counter (it used to be exactly where you see a half-wall coming down from the ceiling), and beyond that, I could see a lot of depth ahead of me since there were no booths – but absolutely no one was there, it was just me. Seeing as I actually planned to buy a ticket in person, I ventured forth.

As I reached where the ticket booths should have been, I noticed arcade machines on the right. This was notable because in the past, Guzzo had a large, two-floor arcade area – including indoor bumper cars – I could see that the area was walled off, but these machines reflected the area that once was.

It was at the very end that I turned and saw signs of life. The snack counter looked as it always had, and there were actually people around. With no ticket booths in sight, I walked over to the counter and asked a staff member if that was where I could buy tickets. Weirdly enough, they confirmed this was the case… and with a bit of thought, I could understand why. With the advent of streaming, it was clear that cinemas were getting less foot traffic – and so Cine Starz essentially eliminated the ticket booth staff and had their snack-dispensing employees handle those transactions. Smart.

After I met up with my friend and we bought our tickets, we started heading towards cinema 11. Looking up, I noticed something odd.

They had cinemas 4 through 12… what happened to 1, 2, 3? Also, look at the 6… it’s clearly a glitched display that also shows the number 18 at the same time, a room that doesn’t even exist. This was definitely the Guzzo I once knew, but it had changed – it felt wrong, a twisted visage of its former self. I laughed at how perfect it was to be seeing a movie about liminal spaces and be having the same unsettling experience with a nostalgic theater from my past.

So we watched the movie, had a good time, and I can tell you that I fully understood what Cine Starz was doing. First, they chopped off parts of the Guzzo theater and were renting it to external companies – one became a gym, another offered some kind of sports experience. This meant fewer screens for Cine Starz, but it also meant more income in a time where movie theaters were less popular than ever. To their credit, though they drastically reduced available seats per room, they seriously upgraded the seating, greatly increasing comfort – even allowing you to recline and raise your legs.

Backrooms, if you’re curious, was a weird movie – definitely worth seeing, but I’m not sure I would recommend it for everyone. According to Wikipedia, the director, Kane Parsons, “[a]t age 20, […] became the youngest director in cinema history to have a film debut at number one at both the domestic and global box offices.” And also, soon after I saw it, they re-released another version of the film, titled “Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition” with 15 minutes of bonus footage. Definitely something I intended to see, but I would more than likely wait to stream it. It was a strong debut for a super young director, and even the re-release was a clever move to boost sales… even if I didn’t take the bait.

Overall, the experience was a positive one – I just never expected that the theater itself would be the liminal space appetizer for the evening, one deeply rooted in my own nostalgia, my own memories. And only then would I actually sit in my seat and experience another liminal space, this time, a little more threatening.

In 2022, I made the decision to apply for an Information Technology (IT) Team Lead position at the educational institution where I worked – if I got it, it meant I would work as part of the IT department, rather than Continuing Education. This was a difficult choice to make as someone with a strong sense of loyalty – I’d been with Continuing Education for more than a decade – I was used to the team and was quite comfortable. By even considering joining IT, I was revealing a significant change in mindset. You see, while in Continuing Education, though I had worked on IT-related matters, the role also had me spending a good chunk of my time working on social media, marketing, and advertising. And on the side, I even took time to work on university courses related to law. I was exploring a future where perhaps IT wasn’t going to remain the core of my career – this had a lot to do with my experience working as developer, which lead to me disliking development – unless it was on my own terms. And so for me to get the point where I even considered working in IT and actually applying – you can imagine, I had realized something about myself, an inescapable truth. At my core, I was built to help people solve technical problems. That’s what I needed to do, that was my calling.

I got the job, and four years later, and I can easily confirm that this was the right move for both my personal and professional development. The educational institution environment provided a wide variety of users that I would get to interact with and a much wider variety of problems to solve – it really kept things interesting. I learned so much more than I would have learned while working in my previous role. That said, I can say that the workload was immediately pretty intense compared to Continuing Education. No matter how hard I worked to try and help everyone, there was just too much demand on the department as a whole. As a perfectionist, this is something I had to adjust to – I had a very hard time at the beginning. Eventually, I remembered a clip from the Simpsons that perfectly represented how it felt:

The goggles truly did nothing in the face of a such a massive wave. I just had to adjust to the newfound reality of my job – no matter what, someone was going to be upset that I didn’t resolve their problem faster. It was impossible for everyone to be happy – that was just the reality of my new role.

And as life goes, I would go on to face a combination of challenges on both personal and professional fronts. Lately, I’ve been trying to be especially conscious of the little positive moments throughout the day. For example, I bike to work fairly often these days – and I’m so appreciative that I can still do so despite dealing with back problems. Cycling can truly be a relaxing, liberating experience, and when you bike to work in the early hours on summer days, there’s less traffic, the air is still cool – there’s something so refreshing about that – it’s a wonderful way to start the day.

This was a big change from what I did for months before – I would instead sit alone in a dark room, no windows, eating lunch by myself – even though the weather was great outside. Why? Talk about absurd. It’s a matter of perspective – if I regularly put myself in a dark room, I shouldn’t be surprised when the world seems like it’s darker overall. There has to be accountability.

What this all naturally leads to is the following quote from John Dunsworth, seen in the last episode of season 12 of Trailer Park Boys, after the end credits. John unfortunately passed away after filming had wrapped, making this especially poignant.

You know what the best currency is? And I just thought about this yesterday. The best currency – the most valuable of all – is gratitude.

What I found myself feeling more and more was exactly that: gratitude. In a certain sense, I just needed to leave the dark room behind, vacant. It was this habit of always focusing on the positive moments throughout the day that ultimately helped me feel better and thus forge a stronger path forward. The best currency, indeed, John.

He touches on something else in the video, if you watched all of it. There’s this bit:

[W]hen you’re dead, you’re dead. But you’re not quite so dead if you contribute something.

You might be fooled into thinking this is John acting as Jim Lahey, legendary drunk, and on some level, he was – but the core of his message is incredibly personal and rooted in his own wisdom. My mission in life has always been to, in my own way, contribute something – through my posts, through my videos, I am working to improve people’s lives one tiny bit at a time, and in my way, have an impact on the world. I always said that if a given blog post, for example, helped one person – it was worth writing.

I remember seeing a video where John introduces viewers to one of his hobbies – put simply, John liked to take stones, sand, cement, and to use it to build the shoreline on his property. Take a look:

When I saw this video a long time ago, I thought it was an odd little hobby, but I always love it when people are passionate about something – I support them completely – even if it doesn’t completely make sense to me. Looking back today, I believe John was doing this precisely for the sake of the ritual – the repeated act of contributing something, rather than the measure of its impact on the world. This hobby of his has kept him fit and has clearly brought him peace, joy, and a sense of accomplishment.

So that’s the thing – for me, the act of helping people with IT problems, that’s my ritual. Whether at work, or at home, I spend hours trying to solve specific problems – and it’s not always easy, or quick. I often find myself going down a rabbit hole for a potential solution, only to realize that it was a dead end. But as my favorite high school math teacher once said: “that’s ok, you found another way that doesn’t work. That’s still progress.” It’s more the deliberate action of working towards a solution that matters to me – whether I help one person, or a thousand, it’s worthwhile. And since I keep publishing content, I won’t be quite so dead when I’m gone – my content will continue to help people.

If you saw my phone, you might think that I had a problem:

The story is a simple one – back in late January of this year, I woke up one morning and felt sick from the previous night of drinking. I was never really a big booze drinker – in fact, it was typically always modest in portion and highly infrequent. And in almost all cases, when I went beyond one drink, it was because I was in a social setting.

But on this particular day, I had lost track of how much wine I had consumed the night before, fueled by good conversations – but the consequence of that really pissed me off – I felt sick all day all because of this mistake? It wasn’t worth it and would never be worth it. And so that was the end of that, I vowed to drop alcohol altogether. After all, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction recommends drinking ideally only 2 standard drinks or less per week:

Key points from the guidance include:

There is a continuum of risk associated with weekly alcohol use where the risk of harm is:

0 drinks per week — Not drinking has benefits, such as better health, and better sleep.

2 standard drinks or less per week — You are likely to avoid alcohol-related consequences for yourself or others at this level.

I easily fit into this definition the vast majority of the time, but on this particular day in January, I made a mistake that pushed me to make a change – I went up one entry in the list quoted above. 0 drinks per week – I’ll take better health and better sleep, please and thank you – no more hangover stupidity.

Now, you could very well ask… why didn’t you just reduce drinking? Because I’m me, that’s why. I was a vegetarian for 8 years and stuck with it (up until I tasted shrimp again, those delicious little bastards). Conversely, in the case of alcohol, I couldn’t quite say that alcohol tasted good, it was more the relaxing effect that was kind of interesting. Taste-wise, everything could be achieved with mocktails or just non-alcoholic beers.

So anyway, that’s one more change that I’ve put into place and am continuing to enforce. I will never make the claim that I will always be off the booze or anything like that; there’s always the possibility of me reversing this or changing my approach, but I just don’t see the purpose at this point. I’m getting older, and one thing that I can damn well do to improve my health is to just NOT do this one additional thing. So I won’t.

I watched a Q&A video recently featuring Adam Savage, a special effects expert best known for being on MythBusters, a show where, according to Wikipedia, they “used elements of the scientific method to test the validity of rumors, myths, movie scenes, adages, Internet videos, and news stories.” It was precisely the focus on the scientific method that made it one of my favorite shows, combined also with how playfully the two hosts interacted. In this particular video, Adam responds to the following viewer question:

“As a mentor/teacher, how do you get people to believe in themselves and to encourage them to take those first steps into a new process and skill set?”

You can watch his response below – it starts at 2:50:

In case you can’t watch a video right now, and also for the sake of commentary, I’ll include specific quotes here – but the video is a far richer experience if you have the time. I also added bold styling below to emphasize a certain part.

“You know, I once wanted to learn a new skill, and I had a friend who was a master practitioner of this skill […] and I found a version of this thing that I wanted to try out, and I told them, I texted them and was like, I’m gonna learn this skill, I’m trying to learn this skill and I’m trying to learn it under this framework. And they were like “That’s not the framework – that’s the wrong framework you’re using” – that’s not the right way to encourage somebody. That is the wrong way… because I immediately felt shame, I’m talking to a master of this craft and they’re like, “WRONG.” That’s bullshit. I don’t have time for that.”

Boy, does Adam ever see things exactly the same way I do, in this case. There’s enough negativity in the world as is, the last thing you need when putting effort towards trying something new is even more negativity. Even if I don’t understand why someone is passionate about something, I know how incredibly powerful that kind of enthusiasm is when it comes to productivity, and deeper than that, how it might play a role in discovering what a person really wants to do in life.

I remember back when I lived with my parents, I was becoming really fascinated with the one computer my father had, and I would try to learn about it whenever I could. However, he did quite a bit to prevent me from pursuing this interest. The classic quote I will always remember is “a computer is for work, not for play” – what he failed to understand, of course, is that it was by playing around on the computer that I would become more familiar with it. He also failed to consider that perhaps my unrelenting interest was a sign of something deeper within me, a natural compatibility with the field. I also think part of his opposition had to do with him not understanding or anticipating the prominent role that computer science would play in the future – to him, it was a waste of time.

My father delayed my growth, there’s no doubt about it, but eventually, I learned to code on my scientific calculator in high school, thanks to a supportive friend of mine, Dan, who had already ventured into that territory. (The moment I learned how to write something as simple as an “if” statement on my calculator blew my mind, and I will never forget where I was and what it felt like.) Eventually, I also managed to buy my own computer, largely eliminating the barriers I had at home, thereby accelerating my learning to the point where I was far ahead of my class by the time I was in college – I was coding in languages that weren’t even covered by the curriculum.

I still wonder from time to time how much faster I could have taken up the craft, and how much more advanced I would have been, if not for my father’s opposition. Needless to say, should I procreate, I will be especially attentive to these “tells” – where interest, enthusiasm and passion reveal something deeper. It wouldn’t be about me, at all, but instead, a moment where I can support another human in the exploration of their interests, and getting that much closer to understanding what they like and don’t like, and what they may want to do for a living. (To be fair, I should say that when I was in my late twenties, my father realized the error of his ways and apologized for not understanding what I saw in computers early on.)

Though not exactly the same, you can surely see how this relates to Adam’s anecdote. I’m like Adam – I think those negative responses are awful, and I fully agree with what he suggests instead – which starts at 5:11:

And again here’s the transcript if you need it:

“That’s like “you could do it that way, but you’re WRONG”, as opposed to, I love your enthusiasm, that trick, that thing that you want to do, that technique you want to learn, it’s a little beyond you, you don’t see that yet, let me shepherd you through the early stages so that you can understand this technique. Or, yes, go try it! Come back to me after a while, when you’ve learned exactly why this isn’t the right thing for you to start with.

And there’s so many frames, but in improv, in comedy improv, the central ethos of comedy improv, […] is yes, and. And that’s the opposite of ‘no, but’ – “yes, and” it takes everything in, and it adds to it. That’s how potentially you can start to help people believe in themselves.”

And that’s exactly it – rather than strip the person of their enthusiasm, one of the most potent propellants, why not add to it? And that, my friends, is one of the key principles I stand for in life – I will always support passion and enthusiasm.

One of the best pieces of art I have ever seen/heard/experienced.

By RenMakesMusic.co.uk

Thanks to Phil for sharing this with me.

Not much to say for this one… simply watch and enjoy.

Every now and then, I encounter something that’s the perfect combination of brilliant and ridiculous – this is one of those cases. Check the video below and you’ll understand the brilliant marketing at play. And it’s not fake!

Hi! Welcome to the new MattRefghi.com. To understand the significance behind this re-launch, I need to go back a bit into the past to explain how I got to this point. 

Back in 2008, I discovered Jeff Atwood’s blog titled Coding Horror, a blog focused largely about software development. I was working as a web developer at the time, so naturally the topic was quite pertinent and interesting to me, as I was living the subject matter day to day. After following Jeff’s blog and being inspired by the quality of what he offered, in January 2009, I decided that I too would launch a blog. It started with technical posts, but since then, the content has diversified and I’ve since published approximately 250 posts – a mix between written and video content.

Now, the missing piece in the story is that back in 2009-2011, I also created my own PHP web platform in my free time as I learned more and more about web development. I named it Hyperion, and since then, I never stopped working on it. As a result, that platform eventually grew to the point where I began to host it through my corporation and license access to clients. Then came 2021, where I increased my development efforts to a new level, releasing 2 large update packages in a year – altogether bringing forth a bunch of improvements, changes, and new features. 

This increase in development is best explained by the fact that I was having fun. And I liked that whatever I did on the side would often also benefit my clients – they too would receive the same updates and improvements. I was also able to pursue features or updates that I personally felt passionate about, which further boosted my productivity. So as 2021 was coming to an end, I had a thought… what if my blog ran on my own software? What if I used Hyperion as a blogging platform? 

The first server-side scripting language I learned was ASP, back in my early college days working alongside my buddy Joe. And I remember quite vividly, to this day, how it completely changed my view of the web. Once I “clicked” and understood how those languages worked – I felt like a whole world of possibility opened up to me. I realized I could do almost anything I wanted, I just needed the imagination and the time to design it.

So that’s exactly what I did. What you’re seeing isn’t any old re-launch of my blog, it’s the first time that my content, written in English, is going to be exclusively available on my platform, written in PHP, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc. It would be unfair if I failed to mention that I was at least partially inspired to do this by seeing Ye’s Stem Player project. 

While I can’t say I was facing any kind of oppression, I did see the immense potential when it came to dogfooding – by turning myself into a regular client of my own platform, I would have even more opportunity to spot areas for improvement, and to come up with interesting new features. And if I wanted to add something to the platform, I could do so fairly easily – because I knew exactly how it was built. And again, my clients would benefit from anything I fixed.

And so that’s the story. At the moment, MattRefghi.com is live, but I’m not fully finished transitioning from the old blog – much like Early Access games, and again, much like Ye, who continues to update his albums after they’ve been released, I decided to release it a bit early as I continued to migrate content and add features. It is nonetheless one of the most exciting chapters in my online presence, and I can’t wait for what’s next.

Note: While I mention Ye twice in this article, I do not condone any form of hate speech. I firmly believe that deep down, Ye has good intentions and simply continues to miscommunicate his ideas… expect an article from me at some point where I explore this.

Update 2025-02-11: I’ve historically demonstrated significant patience in the face of Ye’s mental health issues. There’s a lot to be said for separating the artist from the art – I’ve been very clear when I disagreed with his words and actions. That said, on this day, Ye decided to sell hateful t-shirts on his website. As a result, I have reached my limit – and I will not, and cannot, support someone who takes his hateful ideas that far. I’m deeply disappointed, and can only wish this individual the best in mental health treatment and care.

It’s been a while now that I’ve been observing the news, especially those written by Canadians outlets. And one thing that gets on my nerves from time to time is when I see articles written with a heavy Canadian bias in relation to world affairs. Consider a CBC article from today, as an example:

Yes, let’s focus on the minority of Canadians bracing for impact rather than the massive numbers of Bahamians and Americans facing that same danger – that’s a great idea. The news of Hurricane Dorian makes me immediately concerned for everyone affected…. whether they are from the United States, the Bahamas, or Canada is completely irrelevant. I consider it even a bit insulting that such an article would focus on Canadians when they are mere pebbles in a sea of affected humans. Are Canadians worth more, CBC, by simple virtue of being Canadians? Must you explicitly mention that Canadians are affected to elicit an empathic response in your audience? Or is this an attempt at making Canadian citizens feel like even they, as individuals, have a chance of appearing in a CBC post one day? (The fact that the CBC is a federal crown corporation is not lost on me.)

Though I can’t speak to exactly what they were thinking, I’m guessing that this was simply an attempt to capture a different type of reader – but if that’s the case, count me concerned. Regardless of borders, we, as humans, are all in this together. This type of article emphasizes our differences during a moment where they are especially unimportant. And because of that, in my mind, this article does more damage than good.