11 November 2010, early morning
I went to the Gladstone with a coworker and Tyler to hear Ali and Matt from Well.ca talk about how they keep Well.ca chugging along. They discussed the software development process at Well, the tools they use to get things done, and the corporate culture that facilitates the work they do. Ali’s one of the smartest people I know, so if you’re interested in starting a start up I recommend you copy what he does, more or less verbatim.
Since i’m new to web development I thought the talk was particularly interesting and informative. I learned about a few cool projects that I will share with you now:
- Matt’s told the audience about an automation tool he wrote called doo that looks quite nice. It’s made out of surprisingly little code. Ruby is a strange beast.
- Ali showed off a jabber bot called well-partychat. It’s an implementation of Partychat you can run behind your own firewalls. Partychat is a way to do group chats with Jabber, regardless of how shitty or not your IM client is. Since most everyone already has a Jabber account, this is a good way to set up a persistent chat room. Since it’s in something people already have open and running, I can see how it would actually get used over something like status.net or Campfire.
- Well.ca have somehow managed to trick out Speedtracer to do all sorts of magic. Sadly, i’m not entirely sure how. Speedtracer looks like a seriously awesome project in and of itself. It’s a profiler for Chrome that can tell you all about your web application.
After the talk everyone headed over to the Rhino for drinks. How did that place become the defacto hangout for Toronto software geeks?
Life | Technology
9 November 2010, early morning
Yesterday was a long and exhausting day. What better way to cap such a day off than by watching Primer, one of the craziest movies I have ever seen. It’s a time-travel film, but calling it simply a time-travel film does it a great injustice. I think it’s one of the best science fiction films i’ve seen in quite some time. It’s very creative. It’s also fairly confusing. At 77 minutes in length, I was tempted to watch the film again right after Shima and I finished watching it. At the start of the film it’s not quite clear what’s going on. Then there comes a moment of clarity when you realize, “hey, they finally figured out they built a time machine.” They explain how the machine works, and then the film quickly becomes confusing again. The film was made by a real life engineer, who wrote and stars in the film. (Nice.) They apparently made the movie for $7000, which is amazing: the film doesn’t look low budget at all. I really enjoyed the movie. I’ll definitely watch it again. (Yet another Netflix FTW!)
The official Primer website.
[2] Movies
6 November 2010, late morning
I decided to watch Butcher, The Chef, And The Swordsman without reading its description. I saw the photo on the web site, read the title, and assumed it’d be a kick ass movie. Now, the film was good, but it was also not at all what I was expecting. The Butcher, The Chef, And The Swordsman is a slapstick comedy, somewhat akin to Kung Fu Hustle. I was expecting an action movie. The film is split into three stories: one about a butcher, one about a chef, one about a swordsman. (Hence the name.) I liked the Chef’s story the best. The love interest in the Butcher story is incredibly hot. (It’s nuts.) As a film it is very crazy. There are some really bizarre sequences. I think it’s one of the more creative films I’ve seen come out of Asia in recent years.
The Butcher, The Chef, And The Swordsman on the TIFF website.
Movies
5 November 2010, early morning
The second film I saw at TIFF was Red Nights. This was the first of two midnight madness screenings I attended. As in previous years, Midnight Madness is by the far the best movie going experience at TIFF. The lines are long, but the crowd is full of serious-ass cinema fans. Red Nights was a very well done erotic thriller. It marks the return of Carrie Ng to the big screen. Ng plays a murderer. There is an ancient Chinese artifact a few people are trying to get. There is a French lady who scams her. It’s a strange film. I liked it, but I was hoping for ‘more’. I had very high expectations. (Perhaps too high.) The soundtrack was kick ass. It’s definitely worth watching if you have the chance.
The Red Nights page at the TIFF website.
Movies
4 November 2010, early morning
Shima and I watched Capote over the weekend. (Netflix for the win!) I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it sooner. The movie is a look at Truman Capote during the period of time he was writing the book In Cold Blood. I wasn’t familiar with the book prior to hearing about the movie, but after watching the film I very much want to read it. Capote wrote about the murder of an entire family in a small town in Kansas at the hands of two robbers. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Capote, and does an excellent job with the part. All the other actors in the film support him wonderfully. Clifton Craig Collins, Jr who plays the murderer Perry Smith manages to be sympathetic while also always having a creepy undercurrent to everything he does and says. The film suggests there was a real conflict between Capote’s genuine interest in the lives of the murderers and his compulsion and self-interest in finishing his book. There are all sorts of scenes where he goes from having a sincere and serious discussion with Perry to joking around in New York. The contrast in the scenes is stark. The film makers manage to balance the two sides of the man really well. Capote is an excellent film.
The official Capote web site.
Movies
4 November 2010, early morning
I finally signed up for Netflix this past weekend. Everyone had been complaining about the selection, but they seem to have enough movies to keep you busy for quite a while. I noticed they had a film I had been dying to see for ages, Luc Besson’s Angel A. (The trailer is excellent.) The film stars Jamel Debbouze as a down on your luck do-nothing and Rie Rasmussen as a mysterious woman who helps him turn his life around. Rie Rasmussen is smoking hot. The movie basically takes place over the course of a couple days, and more or less opens with an “It’s a Wonderful Life i’m going to jump off a bridge because no one loves me” moment. From there we get to watch Debbouze and Rasmussen interact, and that’s really where the charm of the film comes from. The entire movie is shot in black and white, and looks gorgeous. The cinematography is great. The film also features a pretty awesome sound track. I really enjoyed the movie.
The official Angel A website.
[2] Movies
29 October 2010, early morning
I thought a new milestone in my quest to get people to call the neighbourhood Blansdowne was reached a little while ago when Toronto Life used the name in an article about Drift Bar. Well almost, they referred to the area as Blandsdowne. That doesn’t even make any sense. There is nothing Bland about Blansdowne. More so, where are they getting the extra ‘D’? This is why no one reads Toronto Life.
The Globe and Mail mentioned my neighbourhood by name in their recent article about the area. I was pretty excited, but then I realized they too spelled the name wrong. What local calls the area Blandsdowne? Seriously? (I’m not even going to touch on the super obnoxious “let’s sell homes” tone of this piece.) This is why no one reads the Globe and Mail.
Journalists of the city: Bloor + Lansdowne = Blansdowne.
[4] Bloor and Lansdowne
21 October 2010, early evening
How did I not finish posting about my trip to India? Anyway, the last portion of our time was spent back in Chennai. For the most part we just loitered around in the city. My pictures of Chennai on Flickr. (Or IMG VQVZ) We made one day trip to the scenic coastal town Pondicherry, and to the archaeological site Mahabalipuram. My pictures of Pondicherry and Mahabalipuram on Flickr. (Or IMG VQVZ) You can see all my photos from India in a collection on Flickr. I took these notes to myself on my iPhone, hence the strange change in tense, poor grammar, and what have you.
Read the rest of this post. (1249 words)
[1] Life | India 2010
21 October 2010, early morning
Ward 18 has only gotten better since I moved here. I would like to think that some of that is due to me, but I suspect a fair amount of the credit should go to Adam Giambrone and his staff. Kevin Beaulieu is the first of Adam’s staff that I met when I moved here. He would attend DIG IN meetings when Adam could not make them, or in addition to Adam. He’s always been easy to get a hold of and very quick to respond to inquiries. He’s also very knowledgeable about the area and its issues. I was glad to see that he was running to take Adam’s place in our riding. There are lots of good candidates running in Ward 18, but I think Kevin is by far the best. At the public debates I’ve attended, he’s the only candidate who can ever offer up very specific solutions to the problems in our ward. Most other candidates speak in very broad terms. (“We need more community meetings!” Perhaps, but that isn’t a solution for every single problem ever.) I hope he makes it on to city council. It will be to our collective benefit.
Bloor and Lansdowne | Politics
20 October 2010, early morning
I’m voting for Joe Pantalone. (You may already know this, since it’s plastered on the top of this web site in a big orange box.) At this point it’s not looking very likely that he will win. I hope I’m wrong about that. If he loses I think it will be a real shame. Toronto under Mayor Miller has been great; Pantalone is in many ways the man who would continue the progressive programs that Miller started. Of the three candidates left running, he is the only one who doesn’t seem to hate Toronto. That should count for something.
Statisticians ask people who they are going to vote for and the newspapers publish these results. I’d argue that polling is a detriment to the political process. It might make sense for candidates to know how they are doing, but does it really matter to the voting public? If you are voting for someone because X percent of a sampled population is voting for that person you are doing it wrong.
People should vote for what they believe in. Otherwise, what’s the point? If you think our first-past-the-post system is broken the way to fix it is certainly is not through strategic voting. If Smitherman does end up winning because a bunch of people couldn’t stomach Ford as mayor, he will essentially have been given a false mandate. That Smitherman can’t beat Ford without banging his, “I’m not Ford,” drum is a testament to just how ineffectual his campaign has been. He has no vision for the city. He seems to think he is entitled to the job. You shouldn’t get to be mayor just because your opponent is a drunk and a moron.
Vote for Joe Pantalone.
Toronto | Politics
8 October 2010, mid-morning
This past weekend my friends Dave and Sarah were married. I got a slick new suit for the occasion. (I now own two suits. We are moving on up!) They were married at the Scarborough Golf Club. Scarborough, as you may know, is the best place on the planet. I was the best man, so l got to stand next to Dave while we waited for his bride. The entire bridal party were more or less in tears for the entire ceremony. It was very sweet, since none of the ladies struck me as criers. Well except for Sarah I suppose. The day was busy. There photos then a wedding then more photos then a dinner and a toast and then some games and drinking and dancing. Much fun was had. It’s always nice to have all my high school friends together in one place. The wedding feels like the last big event of what was a very busy last few months. It was a nice way to cap off the summer. A week has passed and I still feel very happy.
[3] Life
Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters—sometimes very hastily—but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.”
Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.”
That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.
—Maurice Sendak (via)
13 September 2010, late evening
My first film at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was Norwegian Wood, based on the book by Huraki Murakami. I had very high hopes going in. I loved the book. I couldn’t imagine how they would translate it into a film. I’ve been thinking about the movie all day today. A part of me really enjoyed it, while a part of me was fairly ‘meh’ about the whole thing.
The story takes place in the late 60s. It’s all about coping with loss, and love, and suicide, and a whole host of things. The film is shot really well. Some of the locations outside of Tokyo are gorgeous to boot. The costumes and set design are amazing. (The character Midori is always looking super cute.) The film score is damn good. Most important, the acting is also pretty stellar. Writing all this out, i’m not sure what I didn’t like about the film. A part of me feels like it was missing something, but i’m not quite sure what. I think it might have been a bit too abstract. I’ve read the book so it’s hard for me to gauge how unintelligible the film would be for someone who knew nothing about the story. I definitely want to watch it again. I do think it’s well worth seeing. It was a good way to start to TIFF.
Read more about Norwegian Wood on the TIFF 2010 website.
[1] Movies
31 August 2010, early morning
Have you found updates to funkaoshi.com lacking over the last several days. I know I have. The good news is I have a new job. I’m now a Django developer. The bad news is that I don’t really know much Python and even less Django. (I also need to learn more Javascript, figure out what the hell is up with jQuery, sort out how one goes about deploying web applications, and a whole host of other things.) My new company is quite small, so I don’t really have time to learn at a leisurely pace. I’m working on bugs and features from the get go. Gone are the days of going to work and banging out some C++ code in between bouts of web surfing. I spend my time in a blur of reading developer documentation and coding. I think the change of pace has been good for me. Unfortunately, my poor website suffers. Hopefully the few links I do post are extra awesome. Otherwise I’ll go back to posting short boring notes about my day.
[2] Life
19 August 2010, mid-morning
I watched Up in the Air this past weekend. The film stars George Clooney as a man who constantly travels the US as a consultant hired by companies to do mass layoffs. At the start of the film he loves the the lonely life he leads. As the film moves on he starts to reflect on the life he leads and the choices he has made. The movie is really well done. The actors all do really great jobs with their parts. The film seems particularly bleak, but ends on a sort of high note. I really liked it.
[2] Movies
10 August 2010, early morning
Grant and I had a date on Friday. We watched Hot Fuzz. It was playing as part of a film festival curated by director Edgar Wright. I had never seen the film before. It’s a funny send up of buddy-cop films and horror movies — a strange pairing. Simon Pegg plays a super-cop who is sent to a small town in London to work because he’s making his fellow police officers look bad. As this is a film, things in this quaint small town aren’t quite as clean-cut as they appear. It’s a very funny movie. I was reminded very much of Spaced, the TV show Simon Pegg starred in before doing films. There is this creepiness that underlies the whole film, much like the TV show. It’s often a source of the humour. Timothy Dalton plays one of the town locals, and he is hilarious in the film. Hot Fuzz is well worth seeing.
The official Hot Fuzz website.
[2] Movies
4 August 2010, early morning
I watched Larry Clark’s Kids again with Shima earlier this week. I guess she wanted to watch it after reading the article I linked to about the film. The movie begins and ends with children raping children. In between there is a lot of amoral behaviour. It’s about as horrific as I remembered it. I have no idea why I own Kids. It’s definitely a movie you only need to see once. It does feature a kick-ass soundtrack, so that should count for something.
More information about Kids on Larry Clark’s website.
[2] Movies
27 July 2010, early morning
I finally watched a documentary I had mentioned on this site some time back, Arusi Persian Wedding. The film is about a recently married American couple — Alex, a Persian boy, and Heather, a girl originally from the Mid West — who decide to travel to Iran to have a Persian wedding with the boy’s Father’s family. The film opens with the couple preparing for their trip. The girl converts to Islam and they have an Islamic wedding in California so she can get a Persian passport. The couple’s parents meet for the first time. (I feel like there is a back story there that probably could have been explored more.) There is some brief exposition on the recent history of Iran: the 1953 Coup, the rise of the Shah, the Islamic Revolution, and the hostage crisis. The remainder of the film is a sort of travelogue: they travel from town to town, meet locals, and take in the sites. The film ends with their wedding. All in all I quite liked the movie, though it felt a bit light. The movie perhaps tries to talk about too many things in such a short period of time. There are so many interesting things that could have been fleshed out more: Heather’s family’s thoughts on her marriage and her “conversion” to Islam; Alex being a foreigner in both America and Iran; the couple’s culture shock; etc. I think because of when the film was made, back when it wasn’t clear whether America would attack Iran as well, the film perhaps spends too much time talking to Iranians about how they love America. Regardless, I think it’s an interesting film to watch, if only to see what a Persian wedding looks like.
[6] Movies
Rachel: Oh, well, actually we were just talking about me not going to Ross’s wedding.
Phoebe: Oh!
Rachel: It just might be too hard, given the history and all that…
Phoebe: Wow! This reminds me of the time when I was, umm, living on the street and this guy offered to buy me food if I slept with him.
Rachel: Well, h-how is this like that?
Phoebe: Well, let’s see, it’s not really like that. Because, you see, that was an actual problem and, uh, yours is just like y’know a bunch of y’know high school crap that nobody really gives y’know…
Rachel: (starting to cry) I’m-I’m sorry, I just thought that…
Phoebe: Alrighty, here come the water works.
— A conversation on Friends between Phoebe and Rachel. (I am reminded of it often when people start whining about stupid shit that doesn’t matter.)
21 July 2010, mid-morning
My copy of Art Space Tokyo arrived last night. I had actually forgot it was going to show up soon. I had donated to the project on Kickstarter a few weeks or months back: I am a fan of pretty books. I quite like Craig Mod’s writing on books and the future of publishing, so I thought this was a good way to indirectly thank him for his work online. I’m not entirely sure how useful a book about Tokyo’s art scene would be to me in Toronto, but hopefully one day I can take a trip to the city and check out some of these galleries. It would be interesting to see a similar book written about Toronto’s art scene — though it seems like many of our galleries come and go a bit too quickly.
[2] Life
20 July 2010, early morning
Krishna took a bus back from Waterloo last night to go to the Beguiling’s midnight launch of the last Scott Pilgrim book, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour. He showed up at my place around one in the morning and was gone before I woke up. I’m assuming he is back in Waterloo, ready for class. He left a signed copy of the book for me on my dining room table, which I read on the way to work today. I love this series. It’s all so well done. Like it’s predecessors, it’s all completely over the top while at times managing to be sweet and touching. This book ends the series well. If you haven’t read any of these books before, you really need to.
Now I need a new Toronto based comic book to read.
[4] Comics and Books
19 July 2010, early morning
I watched Inception last night at the Paramount downtown. The show we wanted to watch at 7:30 was sold out. As was the following show at 8:00. I didn’t think things would be so busy on a Sunday. We ended up watching the very packed 9:00 show. Inception is amazing. My God, it’s so damn good. The film is about a group of people who invade people’s dreams to try and steal information, a process they call extraction. The group is hired by a Japanese business man to do the opposite: plant an idea in someone’s head, a (possibly impossible) process they call inception. The film features a pretty stellar cast, some insane special effects, and a really well thought out and intricate story. Christopher Nolan is an amazing director, and this film is a really good example of what a big budget film can be. All the elements of the film come together perfectly. The moral of the film seems to be: “Kill yourself! Your life is probably a dream!” (Well, no; not really.) Watch Inception. Nothing else you plan to do could possibly be as important as watching this film.
The official Inception web site.
[3] Movies
14 July 2010, early morning
Casey invited me up to his cottage for a weekend long fishing derby. Being an organized young man, invitations went out almost a year ago. I guess that’s how you make sure people keep their schedules clear.
I started talking shit about my fishing prowess more or less a year ago as well:
My family is from a peninsula on a fucking Island. It almost seems unfair to compete. This is pretty much how I spend my weekends.
Of course, none of my family can swim. Apparently Jaffna Tamils are too busy trying to get their children to become doctors to bother going swimming in the ocean. Last month I confirmed I was going to make it up to the cottage with the following quip:
I actually broke my leg on purpose to give myself a handicap.
Sadly, my trash talking didn’t actually help with my fishing. My first outing out on the rocks of the Ottawa river resulted in one broken bobber, and one lost at sea. During my second round of fishing, on the dock at Casey’s cottage, I managed to tangle the line of my rod and then proceed to tangle the line of Tyler’s rod. My third attempt at fishing in the evening resulted my fishing line getting tangled up in a tree. (I did manage to untangle myself from the tree, which felt like a real accomplishment.) Unfortunately, I tangled up my line the next time I tried to cast off. I’m not entirely sure how.
I was all set to retire from the competition when Matt decided to try and untangle my line. He decided that his new mission was to make sure I catch at least one fish. My line was so tied up he quickly moved on from trying to untangle it to cutting the line and getting me set up again. It was dusk so he quickly ended up covered in mosquito bites, but my fishing rod was ready for action. I cast off one last time, and moments later I saw my bobber dip in the water. I had apparently caught something. I reeled in the fish for what felt like a long time: it was a battle. At this point I realized that I don’t actually know what to do after you’ve caught the fish. Sean, who was currently building our camp fire, came over to see what was up. It turns out the tension on my fishing line was super low; he adjusted that and the reeling in process went a lot quicker. Sean was also there to actually pick my fish up out of the water, hang on to it while I snapped a picture, get the hook out, and throw it back in the water. I caught a cat fish. It was a team effort.
[11] Life
30 June 2010, mid-morning
I’ve been using Last.FM for years. That is to say, i’ve been sending them my listening habits and that’s about it. Recently, I decided to try out their ‘radio’ service, which is now $3 a month in Canada. You type in the name of an artist or genre and they generate a stream of music that is similar to the artist or part of that genre. They also let you listen to a radio station of music based on your listening habits, or based on those of your friends. To say this is all nothing short of magic would be an understatement. I’ve heard so much great stuff over the last few weeks. More so, i’ve discovered so many great musicians I would have never heard of before. (For example, Alice Smith is amazing. As is Res.) I love the music they play in Club Monaco, which I have dubbed Club Monaco house, but which is probably better described as Latin House. The Latin House radio station on Last.FM is awesome. It’s like being at Club Monaco, but without all the black and white clothing. I never thought i’d ever pay for a streaming music service, but Last.FM has been well worth the money so far. I signed up for 3 months, but I imagine i’ll extend my service beyond that. It’s been so damn good.
[4] Music
