A painting of me

Thor

   4 April 2012, early morning

Netflix continues to step up its game. I watched Thor over the weekend. The film is a sort of origin story for the character, explaining how he ends up on Earth fighting bad guys. The story jumps between Earth and Asgard, his mythic Norse homeland. The film has a several excellent actors, presumably slumming it in a superhero film. (Anthony Hopkins plays Odin, Renne Russo is his wife; Idris Elba—what?!—plays Hiemdall; Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd plays some random Norwegian scientist; Natalie Portman is the sexy physicist love-interest.) The film was directed by Kenneth Branaugh, and he does a good job with all the fantasy and Shakespearean-style pomp. He seems like an odd choice to direct an action film, and at the end of the day Thor really was your typical action film. (It’s no Iron Man or X-Men 2.) I think it’s still worth watching, but don’t expect too much.

The official Thor website.

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  • Sun - An Online Portfolio Theme. 

    This also strikes me as some interesting marketing. 4ormat are pushing the fact they have this awesome theme front and centre, and the fact it’s for (and exclusive to) 4ormat is the follow-up message. Normally your fancy themes might be a bullet point for your feature set. In this case the fancy portfolio site is a bullet point for your theme’s features.

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  • Well.ca's Virtual Store. 

    This is a cute idea. Well.ca is an (amazing!) online shop. They’ve taken your typical vinyl subway advert and turned it into another way you can buy stuff from them. Their adverts are actually just aisles of goods. You can use your smart phone to scan the items you want to buy, and Well.ca will bill you and ship everything off.

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Paper for the iPad

   30 March 2012, mid-morning

Yesterday a company called FiftyThree put out an iPad application called Paper. The team is made up of ex-Microsoft employees who look to have left the company when Microsoft cancelled the Courier project. Apparently there was a big exodus of talented people that followed the cancellation, most notably J Allard of XBox fame. It looks like the guys at FiftyThree weren’t done with tablets just yet.

I was playing with the application yesterday. It’s really well done. If you have an iPad it’s well worth checking out. The application is free, but you can pay for access to other pen types: pencil, fat marker, pen, and water colours.

The Verge has a long review of the application.

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  • Harms of Post-9/11 Airline Security 

    This has to be one of the best things i’ve read on Bruce Schneier’s website. I picture everyone reading it shouting, “Booyaka! Booyaka!” when they are done.

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  • The Joys of Blocking People. 

    I don’t block too many people on Twitter. (I do report everyone who looks remotely shady that follows me as a spammer, though.) If you’re following people you feel the need to block, you’re probably doing something wrong.

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  • The Best Brazilian Wax in Toronto. 

    Denise Balkissoon interviews her aesthetician while getting her eye brows done. Doesn’t she know about threading! (She’s brown so she probably does.)

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  • Oilfurnace - A Dwarf Fortress tale by Tim Denee. 

    I really want to figure out how to play Dwarf Fortress, because the game seems thoroughly fascinating. I think i’m going to check it out after I “finish” Skyrim, which I really need to write about here because that game is also incredible. Another illustrated story from Dwarf Fortress is Tim Denee’s Bronzemurder Finally, what everyone seems to point to when talking about Dwarf Fortress is the epic Saga of Boatmurdered.

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  • Calepin. 

    I love everything about this. Calepin makes a blog for you out of text files you store on Dropbox. Everything about this is dead simple, plus you aren’t at the mercy of Tumblr/Blogger/etc if they decide they are done with the blogging game. Everything you’ve written is in the most future proof format available: text files.

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  • Mayor Ford fumbles for third time on transit. 

    The Great Subway Battle of 2012™ was Mayor Rob Ford’s to lose, and he lost it with such single-mindedness and determination that this episode may well go down in Toronto history as the textbook example of political self-immolation.

    This whole piece is an enjoyable read. As it stands, Ford wasted a year and a half trying to build subways in the suburbs we don’t need right now, and couldn’t afford anyway.

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