Never Apologize, Never Explain

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:45:53 GMT

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:49:57 GMT

Wow, I can't believe the frustrating problem I have been endlessly having with jerky Flash video could be solved so simply...stupid Firefox: http://lifehacker.com/5342636/how-to-fix-annoying-youtube-jumpiness-in-firefox

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:23:28 GMT

I saw a couple of interesting movies recently about 80's videogaming.

The first was the more popular documentary The King of Kong, about 2 people vying for the Donkey Kong world record (who even knew there were world records for video games? lol). After you read up on the movie after watching it, you realize that facts were manipulated to an almost Michael Moore level, but it's still pretty captivating.

After I watched that I downloaded the torrent of the documentary Chasing Ghosts which is more low-key and takes a look at a wider range of 80's video game players, though including some of the same characters as in King of Kong. I don't know what's so captivating, I guess the technology, the passion, obessession, self-destruction...it's kind of a cringe-umentary. Maybe most interesting is the way that some people have moved on and grown....and some...haven't.

How to open a bottle of wine, by someone that probably doesn't need more

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:14:33 GMT

10 X-Files episodes for Halloween

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:06:08 GMT

I was reading this piece on what X-Files episodes would be good for Halloween, and I thought it would be fun to make my own list of 10 good Halloween appropriate episodes. These aren't necessarily the best (some of those wouldn't fit the bill, such as the character-study Never Again, or the wackier ones), and they're not necessarily the most horrific (I think Home is mentioned by people too many times just because the premise is kind of over-the-top, and I also don't really like episodes where Scully is tied up and in helpless peril - I think that was a bit overused during the show). Anyway, here goes (with season # & episode # in brackets):

1. Squeeze (1.03)

The first monster-of-the-week story; this and it sequel are hard to forget once you've seen them. Mulder and Scully go searching for someone that can squeeze through the smallest spaces, like airducts, and appears every 30 years to eat people's livers. The scene where they visit the elderly policeman who worked the old cases is chilling.

2. Tooms (1.20)

In the follow-up to "Squeeze", Eugene Victor Tooms is released from jail for lack of evidence (and police brutality by Mulder! lol), and Mulder and Scully need to prevent him from eating his fill of human livers and going into hibernation for another 30 years...all while obeying the restraining order Tooms has against Mulder.

3. Ice (1.07)

In kind of a rip-off (the polite word is 'tribute') of The Thing, the agents fly up to a research station in northern Alaska, where the entire staff seems to have disappeared after erupting in violence. As they're snowed in and isolated, members of the 'rescue' team begin to act weird and they realize that one by one, they are getting taken over by something alien. Tons of suspense and tension.

4. The Host (2.02)

A radioactivity-spawned monster is alive in the sewers of New Jersey...just as we've all always suspected.

Dana Scully: Flatworms are what are known as obligate endoparasites. They live inside the host, entering the body through the ingestion of larvae or eggs. They are not creatures that go around attacking people.
Fox Mulder: Well, that's good. I didn't want to have to tell Skinner that his murder suspect was a giant, blood-sucking worm.

5. Our Town (2.24)

One of the things The X-Files did best is take urban legend or tabloid-style stories, and bring them into the real, believable world. In this episode the agents go to a small southern town that is the headquarters for a fried-chicken empire, and make an unpleasant discovery about 'secret ingredients'. "Chaco Chicken - Good People, Good Food!"

6. The Post-Modern Prometheus (5.05)

Maybe the most Halloween-feeling of the episodes, and the only one to be shot in black-and-white, this one has lots of atmosphere, lightning and blowing leaves, and mutated monsters lurking in the dark...or going to a Cher concert.

Dana Scully: Isn't it obvious? I think what we're seeing here is an example of a culture for whom daytime talk shows and tabloid headlines have become a reality against which they measure their lives. A culture so obsessed by the media and a chance for self-dramatization that they'll do anything in order to gain a spotlight.
Fox Mulder: I am alarmed that you would reduce these people to a cultural stereotype. Not everybody's dream is to get on Jerry Springer.
Dana Scully: Psychologists often speak of the denial of an unthinkable evil or a misplacement of shared fears, anxieties taking the form of a hideous monster for whom the most horrific human attributes can be ascribed. What we can't possibly imagine ourselves capable of we can blame of the ogre, on the hunchback, on the lowly half-breed. Common sense alone will tell you that these legends, these unverified rumors, are ridiculous.
Fox Mulder: But nonetheless, unverifiable and, therefore, true in the sense that they're believed to be true.
Dana Scully: Is there anything that you don't believe in, Mulder?

7. Travelers (5.15)

I couldn't even find a good screencap for this episode, I don't think a lot of people like it. It doesn't really feature Mulder or Scully, but instead goes back to the late 40s, and tells the story of the first X-File. I just really like the retro look combined with an X-Files story.

8. How the Ghosts Stole Christmas (6.06)

This one gets in by virtue of being a haunted house story, the only X-Files episode of that nature. Lots of lightning and appearing/disappearing doorways and taunting ghosts that want to compel Mulder and Scully to kill themselves, or each other.

Scully: The dark Gothic manor, the omnipresent low fog hugging the thicket of overgrowth... Wait. Is that a hound I hear baying out on the moors?

9. Tithonus (6.10)

A wonderfully dark, Scully-centred episode about a photographer who can predict death and always arrives on the scene as it happens, but can never find death for himself. Another interesting thing about this episode is it also touches on something mentioned in the Clyde Bruckman episode; that Scully never dies.

Dana Scully: You know, most people want to live forever.
Alfred Fellig: Most people are idiots, which is one of the reasons I don't.
Dana Scully: I think you're wrong. How can you have too much life? There's too much to learn, to experience.
Alfred Fellig: Seventy-five years is enough. Take my word for it. You live forever, sooner or later, you start to think about the big thing you're missing and that everybody else gets to find out about but you.

10. Audrey Pauley (9.11)

Finally, I feel like I need to put in a Doggett & Reyes episode, since they kind of got a raw deal. In this one Reyes is in a car accident and seems to be brain-dead, but on some other level she wanders a deserted hospital with other patients on the edge of death. Very Twilight Zone-like.

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:12:43 GMT

Barack Obama won the Peace Prize?!? Wtf? Is this April 1st? Has my flu progressed into full-scale fever & dementia?

So now a couple of jokes on late talk show appearances and promoting futile, unwinnable wars gets you a Nobel Peace Prize?

I litigate, I do not capitulate!

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:56:25 GMT

Still waiting on justice! I now have a file number, exchanging emails back and forth.

I didn't make those myself. I have a lot of time on my hands, but not *that* much, lol.

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:57:49 GMT

Warbot in Accounting

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 22:02:20 GMT

"Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries." Great little article on Ray Bradbury: A Literary Legend Fights for a Local Library

Some more gems from the piece: The Internet? Don’t get him started. “The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles, which is jammed with enormous stuffed animals, videos, DVDs, wooden toys, photographs and books, with things like the National Medal of Arts sort of tossed on a table.

“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:22:18 GMT

Wow, this looks very good:

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:10:59 GMT

Like Cosmo Kramer, I only watch Canadian football. Part of the reason is that sometimes you just see something you'll never see again. Like this 'tribute' to Michael Jackson:

Unfortunately they didn't include the sideline reporter's bit afterward, where relates that he found out it was a tribute to MJ and asked Bruce, "Why not a moonwalk?" and Bruce replied "Becuase MJ doesn't moonwalk anymore." LOL

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:40:44 GMT

I remember I was in the early grades and the whole Thriller song/video was a pretty big thing at school. Too bad about the freakshow that happened later, but I guess not a lot of people can survive growing up famous.

(Yeah, the sound quality is pretty terrible, but it's the only clip of this song I could find)

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:10:47 GMT

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:13:28 GMT

I think the wintertime is my favourite season. I miss it. About the only thing good about summer is wearing shorts and sandals, which is pretty relaxing. But pretty much soon as spring hits I get allergies and then all sorts of flying, stinging insects, and heat & humidity, and sunburns - and the sun's been so bright the past couple of days that I usually get a headache just looking out the window in the morning. There's probably more stuff to add to that list too.

Tue, 26 May 2009 19:07:04 GMT

Wow, I've got a whole new level of respect for Michaelle Jean after she ate a piece of raw seal heart from a freshly-slaughtered seal.

There's obviously a political implication the gesture, as the EU ignorantly put in a ban on most seal products coming from Canada. So I guess they can feel better about themselves, while at the same time still raking in cash for things like fighting bulls to the death in front of tourists. The funny thing is that seal populations are still going to need to be managed, to keep seal and fish population balanced (the way humans have been managing them long before Europeans came here), so the legislation isn't preventing seal deaths, it's just preventing people from making a living off of the land and the fruits of nature. I guess the European thinking is it's better that the seal carcasses be thrown away rather than used for people's benefit? There's nothing that makes sealing any more cruel than cattle ranching or chicken farms or the many, MANY wild animals that are killed in the course of producing a 'vegetarian' dish; but the PETA scumbags get to feel good about themselves by scapegoating a population that is both geographically distant and not too wealthy.

Stuff like this almost makes me feel proud to live in a monarchy :)

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:09:05 GMT

"I might have a whole new life, next time you see me": 25 worthwhile documentaries about ambitious outsiders - This is a pretty neat list of movies. There's a handful there I've seen, and some others that I want to, as well as a few that don't sound that good at all.

One which I found about from that list and just watched tonight is Danielson: A Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise Here), which was a lot better than I expected, and gave me a lot to think about. It's based around Daniel Smith, an artist and musician, who formed a band made up mainly of his family members, called The Danielson Family, who are deeply rooted in Christianity while creating an odd stage show (such as all dressing in nurse's uniforms) and the sort of music that got their songs produced by cooler-than-cool indie producers like Kramer and Steve Albini. During the course of the filming of the documentary, one of the musicians who is an occasional fill-in for the band, Sufjan Stevens, goes from roadie to understudy to opening act to what is apparently a huge deal critically and commercially. I really hadn't heard of the Danielson Family before, and only marginally about Sufjan Stevens, as I don't listen to much rock/pop anymore.

Some of the things it left me thinking about was Daniel Smith talking about how our lives and what we're meant to do is already pre-planned before the beginning of time. And of how he sits back and lets the Holy Spirit bring most of the songs to life. He compares the work most of us do to a kid helping his dad change a tire - the kid is enjoying himself and feels like he's doing something, but it's really God doing all of the real tough work. Which kind of reminds me of a quote from a Neil Young interview I watched recently, where the interviewer is asking him about his place in songwriting, and the few others that are at that level, and Young just blinks perplexedly a few times and says, "I'm so absent".

"And another thing, when I gun the motor, I want people to think the world is coming to an end!"

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:25:31 GMT

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:00:02 GMT

wow...the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are really blows me away: http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/wherethewildthingsare/

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:21:19 GMT

Wow, cool, apparently Neil Young's next record is a concept album all about electric cars...I love it when he goes off the deep end :D

"His own guitar solos are luridly violent affairs—he staggers crazily about like an enraged fisherman who doesn't realize he's hooked the seat of his own pants...We love Neil Young because he does whatever the hell he wants, even if half the time we'd rather not sit around and watch him do it. There is only so much entertainment you can derive from watching a genius lose his way." http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-12-24/music/let-s-avoid-neil-young-s-next-record/

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:06:28 GMT

I don't usually like Family Guy...but this is a hilarious take on that Christian Bale freak-out. Maybe NSFW?

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:11:28 GMT

An old hard drive stopped working for me a few days ago, and though there wasn't really anything there I was too concerned about losing (mostly video & audio files), I was still looking around at solutions I might try in order to make sure the drive is dead. And then I found an idea I'd never heard of before, freezing your hard drive to get it to work! So, I threw it in the freezer, and actually didn't get around to trying it again for a few days. Today I pulled it out and plugged it in, and not only did it work long enough for me to check what exactly I had on there, and xfer most of it off, but it is still running smooth, long past the expected 20 minutes most people experience! I'm not sure I'll trust it again, but for now I think I'll keep using it and see what happens.

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:12:11 GMT

Wow, Newegg sells a USB turntable...though its alternate name is 'vinyl archiver', lol.

As an antidote to my viewing of the terrible 'No Country for Old Men' last night...

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:12:52 GMT

A new interview with Werner Herzog.

"If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn't matter whether you're bold or cowardly, or whether you're stupid or intelligent. Doesn't get you anywhere. So, there are much more important things out there that you have to follow. And once you follow your vision, it doesn't matter whether you get shot en route or not. You have not lost sight of what you are doing."

"When you ask biologists, talk to people who study climate and people who try to detect high-energy neutrinos, all sorts of scientists – it is very, very obvious that our presence, our physical presence on this planet is not sustainable. And I must say this: it doesn't make me nervous, but we have to anticipate that other species are much more successful. For example, sponges. They have seen hundreds of millions of years and they probably have several hundreds of millions of years more. Or snails, or cockroaches, and microbes are also out to get us. And there are many other things that make us much more vulnerable than other species that ever roamed this planet. And when you look at evidence of biological life on our planet, of course, it is a constant chain of cataclysms. We had trilobites and ammonites and such, but they basically disappeared. But they had a long, long, long-lasting presence on the planet. And of course, most famously, the dinosaurs, which came and disappeared. So human beings appeared only very, very recently, and they will probably, within timespans of hundreds of millions of years, have no any chance at all. Whether we will disappear in 12,000 years, or 80,000 years, or 200,000 years, doesn't really matter. But it will be fairly quickly."

"I watched the Anna Nicole Smith show and now it's over, so now I watch WrestleMania and things like that, simply because a poet must not avert his eyes. You have to know in which collective world you are living; you cannot isolate yourself, you should not. But let me answer your question about film-makers. Yes, there are at least 200 films that I could rattle down the titles that I find wonderful, but none of them I could say has influenced me because, in a way, I had to invent cinema for myself."

Old vs. New streetsigns

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:22:54 GMT

Apparently Toronto is rolling out a new street-sign design. Below are the old design (which was apparently $300 a sign!!), the streamlined new ones that had been popping up (that I thought looked real cheap), and the new style:

I also wanted to find pictures of the backlit streetsigns they used to have in some downtown areas, but no luck. Here is a really neat picture of old-time Toronto:

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:36:43 GMT

I think this puts it over the top that Ovechkin is not only the best, but also the coolest player in the NHL.