20 August 2009, early morning
I watched The Time Traveller’s Wife last night. The movie, like the book, is about the relationship between a time travelling man and his wife. (The book is excellent, well worth reading.) I wasn’t expecting much. The movie definitely exceeded by meagre expectations. People complain about the casting, but I honestly didn’t have a real vision of either character in my head. (I suppose I imagined someone scrawnier playing Henry, but who doesn’t like Eric Bana?) The movie strips away much of the book, leaving the core story more or less intact. The film manages to present a coherent tragic love story, but sacrifices a lot of the nuance present in the book. The characters in the book are a lot more interesting, and a lot of the side characters are a lot more fleshed out. There is a lot of conflict removed from the movie, making it feel at times like a typical hollywood romance — except for the whole time travelling thing. The movie is shot and edited quite well. There are several sequences that quickly show the passage of time, how Henry manages to survive his time travelling escapades, etc, that are much longer narratives in the book. I think the actors did the best they could, considering the premise for the film is kind of ridiculous. (It takes real talent to say, “I’m a time traveller,” with a straight face.) Shima cried, though that’s not saying much. It’s an enjoyable enough romance film.
The official The Time Traveller’s Wife website.
[1] Movies
19 August 2009, mid-morning
I attended #hoHOTo last night. It was a bit of a let down compared to the last one. The Christmas party came together rather quickly, and may have contributed to all the hype that seemed to develop around the event. Pretty much every single tech-geek I know attended the event. Added to this mix were a bunch of advertising and marketing people I wasn’t expecting. The venue, the Modclub, was a good spot to host the event, as it consists (more or less) of one big space. It was a party. Last nights event apparently sold out, though you couldn’t tell from the lack of a crowd. The fact the space was split in two probably didn’t help matters much. Almost everyone I knew who had gone to the first event didn’t come to the second. (And I know some people who bought tickets and didn’t bother showing up, there was such a lack of interest in the event.) That’s not to say it wasn’t a nice night out. I saw Ali and Tyler and Laurence. I had some beer. I met some random peoples.
Life | Toronto
17 August 2009, early morning
I watched Step Brothers over the weekend. It’s a Will Ferrel movie. He plays that sort of asshole dude that never grew up character he does so well. John C. Reilly plays a similar character. In the film their characters are loser 40-year olds who still live with their (single) parents. The two parents marry, and so the two men end up being step brothers. There isn’t much in the way of plot, it’s more about how their characters develop and grow as people. I’m probably reaching with this characterization of the film. It’s mostly a lot of stupidness. It was funny at times. You probably have to like Will Ferrel to enjoy the film.
The official Step Brothers website.
Movies
13 August 2009, early morning
The Japan Foundation screened Dream for Kabul last night. It’s the story of a father, Haruhiro Shiratori, who loses his son during the World Trade Centre bombing. He decides to try and build a memorial to his son in Kabul. His goal is to try and promote peace. Of course, nothing is quite so simple. Shiratori is an engaging figure, and quite inspiring. Throughout the film he and the people interviewed suggest that before his sons death he was probably a very different figure. It sounds like he and his son were estranged. What he’s trying to accomplish is quite inspiring. The film is shot in three locations: Tokyo, New York, and Kabul; there is also a lot of footage of post-WWII Tokyo. The way the film is edited, you often find yourself thinking you’re watching a scene in one country when in fact you’re actually in another. It’s a smart effect. The film seems to meander a bit at times, but on the whole I think it’s interesting and well worth watching. As an aside, I love the Japan Foundation. That building is awesome, everyone there is so friendly, and their shows and exhibits are so nice.
The official Dream for Kabul website.
Movies
4 August 2009, early evening
If you grab the source for ImageMagick, build and install it, you might expect you’ll be able to muck around with JPEGs. You’d be wrong of course, you need to download and install the jpeg-6b library. Now, you might think a quick ./configure; make; sudo make install, is all you need to do get going with jpeg-6b, but you would be wrong. You need to run sudo make install-lib as well to actually build the libraries that ImageMagick needs to process JPEG images. This seems a bit convoluted. It’s not like JPEG is an obscure format.
Code
30 July 2009, early morning
When I was growing up my mom wouldn’t let us throw out our nail clippings in the garbage, like normal people might. You weren’t supposed to keep them in your house, so we would flush them down the toilet or sink. It’s either a Hindu superstition or a Tamil superstition. My grandmother made her do the same thing. I guess nail clippings are bad? I don’t really know. It strikes me as an odd thing to be superstitious about. The thing is, I am 29 years old and I don’t live at home, but I still do this. Worse yet, I’ve somehow managed to get Shima to do this as well. This is how you spread the crazy.
[2] Life
Coming from the arid north of the country, where nothing grew except children, the Tamil man’s chief industry was the government service, and education, English education, his passport.
— Ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka, by A. Sivanandan.
22 July 2009, early morning
My copy of Sentimental Journey, Winter Journey arrived yesterday. It was leaning against the door to our condo when Shima and I arrived home. I honestly wasn’t completely sure it would make it to me.
Nobuyoshi Araki
is one of Japan’s most infamous photographers. I first saw his work in a Phaidon book Martha bought me, which collected together photographs of some of the best photographers in the world. Araki was featured. The photographs Phaidon picked to showcase were the sorts of photos he is most well known for: nudes and Japanese rope bondage. I had mixed feelings about Araki for a long time. In my mind he was little more than a pornographer. Some of his photos were interesting, but many really didn’t seem particularly good, especially outside of the contexts of the books they were made for. I think my opinions of his work changed after I watched Arakimentari, a documentary about the man. In the film, a reasonable amount of time is spent discussing Sentimental Journey, Winter Journey.
The book is split into two sections. The first section features a selection of photographs from a book Araki made on his honeymoon with his wife Yoko, called Sentimental Journey. (This book is incredibly rare. Apparently it was self-published, and only 1000 copies made.) This section is predominently filled with photos of Araki’s wife, clothed and unclothed, before the two have had sex or after. (Ruffled sheets and other elements in a scene hint at what has transpired between two photos.) The next section of the book is quite different. The Winter Journey is about the death of Araki’s wife in 1990 to cancer. The photographs are unlike anything else i’ve seen by Araki. Photographs are all marked with the date, and look like they were shot with some cheap consumer camera. There is a snapshot aesthetic to them all. Many of the photos are of the skyline or his wife’s cat. It’s very repetitive, and gives one the feeling of being on a forced march. We see photos leading up to Yoko’s death, of her death, and Araki’s life after her death. The last photo is both brilliant and simple. What’s impressive about this portion of the book is that the photos aren’t technically good at all, but when taken as a body of work they become something stunning.
I bought this book from Japan Exposure for Â¥3,990 plus shipping. The shipping was expensive, but compared to the prices I was seeing for the book in North America it was a steal. (One reason I didn’t expect to get the book was because I thought the price was a mistake.) The book is completely in Japanese, but another reviewer seems to have translated the important captions.
I can’t recommend the book enough. (And i’m not alone here.)
Photography | Comics and Books
16 July 2009, early morning
3-speed has opened up down the road from me, just a bit West of Dufferin and Bloor. The bar is owned by the same people that own The Communist’s Daughter. I was there last night with some people from DIG IN. It was a bit shocking for a few reasons: a) the place was packed b) with young hip 20-somethings c) and no degenerates. Blansdowne is changing. Starving Artist and The Holy Oak Cafe both opened up within a few weeks of each other. Starving Artist is almost always packed, not always with people from the area, and serves awesome waffles. Holy Oak seems to cater to people in the area more, and seems to be doing well enough. Every time I’ve gone there are a few people hanging out doing whatever it is people do in cafes. It’s a nice spot as well. Calico, a Vegan place, opened up last week down the road from Holy Oak. Further down the road a new (proper) Mexican place opened up as well. And further still there’s a new Trinidadian place, 3-Chelles. When I moved here I called Blansdowne the lamest strip on Bloor. I figured it would change. I’m pretty sure it has.
[4] Bloor and Lansdowne
15 July 2009, mid-morning
The CRTC hearings that took place over the last week or so are fascinating to read about. Rogers did an embarrassingly bad job of presenting its point of view. On Monday, Rogers said, “It is the behaviour of the application, not the application itself that we are concerned with. If an application which could cure cancer acted in a certain way, it would be also be subject to traffic management.” Yes, Rogers testified they would throttle the cure for cancer. Bell didn’t fare much better yesterday, though there weren’t nearly as many bad sound bites. It did come out that they’ve cut monthly bandwidth caps by as much as 90% — some of their services now have a 2gb cap. And they throttle their traffic for 10 hours of the day. So you can pay for a 5mb connection and get a 80*kb* connection 1/3 of the time. (An 80kb connection is slightly faster than a modem.) What a deal! I really don’t understand how Bell can avoid hemorrhaging customers. They also spent much of their time on the stand avoiding questions or lying. Sadly, I think the CRTC is firmly in their pockets. The transcripts end with this comment from the chairmen to Bell: “I do not think we are very far apart. Thank you very much, we spent more time with you, but you did start the whole thing.”
If you aren’t already with TekSavvy you should switch. Vote with your feet. Bell and Rogers don’t deserve your money. (Even though their customers are apparently very happy.) If you switch to TekSavvy you can also avoid Bell’s internet throttling completely by using ML/PPP. You’ll also get to talk to real people when you call them for support. Seriously.
[3] Technology
14 July 2009, early morning
Degrassi Jr. High and Degrassi High ended on an incredibly bleak note with the School’s Out TV Movie. The film came out in 1992, when I was in grade 6. I remember watching it then. Shima and I watched it again last night. We have been watching the entire series over the last couple weeks. It’s interesting to compare the earlier episodes of the show with the later ones. When the show began, it was pretty obvious only a couple of the kids were actual actors. By the end, it seems that even those kids who couldn’t act took lessons. This is good, because some of the storylines in School’s Out would have been painful to watch with Degrassi Jr. High era wooden acting. School’s Out takes place a year after Degrassi High ends. There are lots of characters from the series notably absent, and some characters appear in the background, but don’t really have lines. (In this respect, it isn’t unlike a very long episode of the TV show.) The film’s main plot follows a love triangle between Joey, Catlin, and Tessa. A subplot involves Wheel’s fixing up a car so he can drive off to Calgary. If you haven’t seen the film, I’ll leave things at that. The movie is bleak. Some of the last scenes in the film seem particularly dark. School’s Out was a really scorched earth way to end the show, especially since the series finale for Degrassi High was fairly up beat. If you haven’t seen the original Degrassi series you’re missing out. It’s some of the best television ever made. Seriously. Well, maybe anyways.
[1] Movies | Television
10 July 2009, early morning
I watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last night. As much as I hate Michael Bay, I love Transformers too much not to watch the movie. The film is better than the first film, though it still kind of sucks in the grand scheme of things. (Many of my complaints about the first film apply equally to the second.) This movie features a reimagined Soundwave, Megan Fox, guns, lots of cars exploding, lots of regular ass explosions, and people running in slow motion. Those are all things I can get behind. It also features crappy dialogue, hammed-up acting, fairly offensive jive-talking robots, and a very stupid plot: classic Bay. If you like Michael Bay, this film takes what he does to whole new levels. I want to punch Michael Bay in the dick, but even I have to admit the dude knows how to blow up some cars. As I’ve said before, there is only one true Transformers movie, and it was made in 1986.
The official Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen web site.
[6]
8 July 2009, early morning
Google is making an operating system. An operating system that sounds like it is designed solely to run web pages. What?
A few years back Kottke was arguing that Google would do something like this, develop a WebOS. I thought this was the dumbest idea ever. I still do. Web applications have come a long way, but at the end of the day they are still a bunch of web pages. Apple’s Mobile Me web site is fairly cutting edge when it comes to putting a rich UI up on the web, but even that seems lacking when compared to the ‘real’ versions of Mail, Calender, Addressbook, etc. Computers are stupid-fast nowadays. Yes, even those lame-ass netbooks are fairly powerful machines. To not take advantage of this computing power seems foolish. Why run an entire web browser if the end goal is to view and edit contacts in an address book?
Applications that seamlessly take advantage of the Internet in novel ways are to be applauded. If my file system backed itself up automatically and securely to computers half way across the world, that’d be amazing. Apple’s MobileMe offering got off to a rocky start, but I see that as the direction computing should be moving in. Apple has a suite of powerful applications that can communicate with the web to share what actually matters to you: your data. This seamless movement of data between applications, computers, etc, is what the computer industries goal should be. Trying to shoehorn everything into a web page, not so much.
Technology
7 July 2009, late morning
As you may know, I love Threadless. This came up again recently at a fund raising post-bar-exam party Tiff threw. I mentioned in passing that I really like Threadless shirts that have cute cartoon characters doing ridiculous things. For exanmple, Cookie Loves Milk. I also mentioned a shirt my brother recently bought, which features a piece of toast putting jam on itself. That toast is so happy. Tiff, in addition to being a lawyer and a marathon runner, is also a baker. For my birthday she turned the t-shirt into a cake. And this wasn’t some half-assed endeavour: the cake was crazy. (She also entered the cake in a contest, which turns out to be a MetaFilter Project.) I felt bad chopping the cake up.
[1] Life
2 July 2009, late morning
I’ve been following Indrajit Samarajiva on Twitter recently, since I enjoy reading his blog. He lives in Sri Lanka, so he gets to do interesting things like visiting internment camps:
disease is down dramatically in all Menik Farm zones except three
got back from Menik Farm, inside. Not so bad, but peeps want out. Dusty. Kids need a good scrub. And Permite. Feel humbled
the government has honestly handled this very well. Especially the soldiers and doctors.
Yay?
Disease is down in an internment camp the government set up. How is that an accomplishment? These internment camps are an entirely man made humanitarian disaster. That the government is slowly managing to overcome this disaster is certainly a good thing, but is that something to be impressed about? I’m not so sure.
Indi seems to be operating under the assumption that these internment camps need to exist. The question then is how to make them more humane, more safe, more sanitary, etc. Obviously this is the just thing to do. No reasonable person is going to argue that the displaced people should be left to die, or to suffer more than they already have. The debate then centres around how much to spend, or whether the military should be in charge of the camps, or what sorts of tents to buy, of family reunification, etc. Arguing the camps shouldn’t exist in the first place is outside the boundaries of reasonably debate. The only people who oppose these camps are the LTTE loving Tamil diaspora, or former colonial powers who want to poke their noses into Sri Lanka’s business. This is how you construct an easy to win argument.
I singled out Indi because I just read his twitter messages today, but I see this sort of thing in other moderate news sources I read, like Ground Views for example. One would think it’d be hard to sell people on mass imprisonment. The Sri Lankan government should be commended in how it has managed to shape this story.
[3] Current Events
30 June 2009, early afternoon
In Canada an iPhone will cost you between $200-$300 on a 3 year contract. Those 3 year contracts will cost you upwards of $80 a month. Maybe you can scam something a little bit less, but at the end of the day, owning an iPhone is fucking expensive. You know what isn’t expensive on the iPhone? Applications. Want to get things done? The bestest application in the world costs $10. One of the best twitter clients costs you $3. The most awesome game on the planet costs you $1. I know what you’re thinking: god damn that’s amazing. Strangely, this doesn’t seem to be what most iPhone owners think.
Mental Note: A good way to filter out cheapskate customers you don’t want is to price your iPhone application at $4.
This message is sitting in my copy of Birdhouse. When Birdhouse came out people couldn’t shut up about how expensive it was. Release any application that costs more then $1 and you’ll get people moaning on twitter about its cost. When the AppStore let you write reviews for applications you didn’t own, you could always count on at least one review bitching about the price of the application. If that new Twitter client that costs $5 is going to break the bank, maybe you need to rethink owning an absolutely ridiculous cell phone.
There are lots of reasons not to spend $5 on a twitter client. It being too expensive really shouldn’t be one of them.
[5] iPhone
30 June 2009, early morning
Shima and I watched Tokyo Sonata at the Royal last night. The film is a look at the life of a typical Japanese family after the patriarch loses his salary-man office job. He hides this fact from his family, going off to “work” each day. This sounds like it could be the set up to a comedy, but it’s actually an incredibly bleak look how this family slowly falls apart. The music, dialogue, and the way it was filmed reminded me of art-house films from the 60s or 70s. I liked this film a lot. (Shima, not so much.) The cinematography is lovely. The actors are great. The films last two scenes are amazing.
The official Tokyo Sonata website.
[1] Movies
26 June 2009, early morning
I’ve been slowly reading through the UTHRJ account of the final days of the recent war in Sri Lanka. If you want a good read on why Sri Lanka is a horrible place, A Marred Victory and a Defeat Pregnant with Foreboding is well worth a read. It is written in the same matter of fact bleak as hell style as their other reports, and covers the final days of the war. So far it’s all indiscriminate killing, extrajudicial murder, mass graves, and human rights abuses. I’m about half war through the special report now, and it’s almost painful to keep reading.
There are quotes from survivors:
“On the road we saw a few bodies. No one buries them anymore. This has resulted in the whole area being permeated by a putrid stench. When someone dies or is killed, people are only looking for food to be taken, but do not bury the victim. From our new location, where we just moved in, the water source is some distance away. When I attempted to fetch water early this morning, I had to race back to our bunker upon hearing the ominous boom of cannon and soon shells began falling around. It doesn’t bother me too much anymore. It has become normal that you could die any moment and anyway the food situation is so bad that some were dying from starvation. In desperation, resulting from shelling, food scarcity and total misery some people felt it was better to walk out of the safe zone although you know the LTTE is shooting people who attempt it, besides, it is extremely dangerous.” — Anonymous, 15 May 2009
And then there is what they’ve pieced together from multiple sources:
These sources said that Prabhakaran was tortured probably at Division 53 HQ in the presence of a Tamil government politician and a general. Several army sources have said Prabhakaran’s 12-year-old son Balachandran was killed after capture. Ours said that he was killed in front of his father. These sources added that this information is correct unless officers at the highest level are fibbing to one another. Our sources in addition to several others have said that all the LTTE persons remaining in the NFZ were massacred. [ed. emphasis is mine. wtf?]
And then there are things they report that the government didn’t even bother trying to hide, though one has to wonder why the fuck not:
As to the fate of the women, the Defence Ministry’s web defence.lk displayed among bodies identified that of a woman named as Colonel Mekala. Her body lies beside that of another woman in what appears to be a night dress, not battle fatigues. Mekala’s picture suggests that she had been stripped and her body was covered with a blue cloth before being photographed. Some flies and some white substance in her hair could also be noticed. Some of the victims had been executed by shooting into the ear. One wonders what made the Defence Ministry take pride in displaying these pictures.
It’s all stuff like this.
The next section, which I have yet to read, is on the prison camps. It’s actually disappointing we live in a world where there is even an argument over the legitimacy of keeping people locked up in internment camps. This quote by Tisaranee Gunasekara sums up my feelings nicely:
What if after the death of Rohana Wijeweera and the top JVP leadership, the government decided to incarcerate all residents of the areas previously under de facto JVP control (such as most of Hambantota and Moneragala districts), in order to catch a few thousand JVP operatives? What if huge ‘welfare camps’ were built and hundreds of thousands of Sinhalese were herded into them, so that the Security Forces could weed out a few thousand JVP cadres hiding amongst them? Would that not have been as illegal as hell and a moral outrage? Counterproductive too, as it would have further polarised the South, rendering impossible any reconciliation, any return to normalcy. Sri Lanka would have remained an unstable land, riven by fear, suspicion, bitterness … The men, women and children in these camps are not de jure prisoners because they have not been found guilty of or even been charged with any crime. They are de facto prisoners, whose sole ‘crime’ was living in ‘enemy territory’. The camps represent nothing less than the extra-judicial internment of almost the entire population of the Northern districts which were under Tiger control during the last phase of the war. If this is not ethnically based collective punishment, what is it?“ – from the Sunday Island 7 Jun 2009 [ed. emphasis is mine.]
Sometimes I get asked about what’s going on in Sri Lanka. I find now I try to change the subject as quickly as I can. At least now there are protests in Iran for people to talk about.
Current Events
25 June 2009, late at night
Micheal Jackson is dead. He was god damn brilliant. He will be missed. The dude was fucking Michael Jackson.
[5] Life
24 June 2009, early morning
To conclude: Instapaer & Instapaper Pro 2.0 are all kinds of good.
Read the rest of this post. (306 words)
Software | iPhone
20 June 2009, early morning
Hopefully the rain lets up. Street festivals aren’t as much fun when you are being rained on. The BIG on BLOOR festival takes place today. Bloor St. is closed from Lansdowne to Christie for the event. Last year it was shockingly busy. Hopefully this year people still choose to come out.
Bloor and Lansdowne | Toronto
17 June 2009, early morning
I met up with some ex-Konja members to go see Departures at Cumberland Cinema. The movie won a bunch of awards in Japan, so I was looking forward to seeing it. Like many Japanese films I’ve seen, Departures is about a fellow who does something the rest of Japanese society look upon as shameful, but by the end of the film everyone realizes what he does isn’t so shameful after all. In this case, the protagonist tends to the dead. The movie is melodramatic comedy. The girls next to me were crying for good chunks of the film, and then laughing the rest of the time. The film strikes a strange balance. (The opening scene really sets the mood for the rest of the film.) The film is quite touching at times, though i’m not sure it’s a bit too melodramatic. I liked it regardless, and I think it’s definitely worth watching. There are some very sweet moments.
There was a trailer for Tokyo Sonata before the film began, which is a film I also really want to see. I love me some depressing foreign cinema.
The official Departures web site.
[4] Movies
What Ahmadinejad needs right now is Katherine Harris, some hanging chads and Chief Justice Rehnquist. Oh yeah, and a totally docile public.
— Adam Isacson
15 June 2009, mid-morning
Shima’s dad said he couldn’t sleep Saturday, he was up all night following whatever news he could find about the protests in Iran. If you have a lot of time, the Daily Dish has a serious-ass round-up of pretty much anything and everything that has been said about the protests. The best coverage of why the election was probably stolen comes from Juan Cole, Stealing the Iranian Election. When the vast majority of your country is under 30, you probably don’t want to push them too far. Clearly the Iranian regime has. These aren’t small protests. People are angry. What’s perhaps more important is that the protests aren’t isolated to Tehran anymore, they are taking place throughout the country. At some point, if you have enough people out, it’s next to impossible for true suppression to take place. Uneducated teenagers on motorbikes can only do so much. I think the clerics are going to have to backdown, or they’ll lose far more than just this one election.
(As a side note, Twitter once again proves it is by far one of the most interesting pieces of tech to come out in recent years. The coverage of the protests on Twitter is crazy. All the haters need to shut up already.)
Update: God damn this is a big protest.
Update: FiveThirtyEight has some more discussion on irregularities with the Iranian election results. And the Atlantic suggests people follow the news of these events like they were a CIA analyst.
Update: The Big Picture on the Iranian election protests. Robert Fisk’s coverage of the protests is also well worth a read. (He points out why Ahmadinejad is so popular in the rural communities of Iran.)
Update: The armed forces are shooting protesters.
Update 3:11PM: There are reports that protesters have burned down a Basij base. If true, that’s pretty amazing. The Basij need to get their asses kicked. Hard.
Reliable news from Iran has arrived that after the death of one person by Basij, the Basij base in Azadi Sq. has been burned down and the commander in that base has been killed.
Update 4:33PM: Looks like the above report was true.
Current Events
7 June 2009, late at night
Shima and I just saw Pixar’s latest film Up. A crotchety old man flies away in his house accompanied by a boy-scout of sorts; they have an adventure together. It’s a very sweet film. The opening is probably bound to make a good chunk of the audience tear up. I think it’s amazing that Pixar can make these computer animated films that are so touching. Pixar are basically in a league of their own when it comes to making animated films. They have no competition whatsoever. The only films I think match up to the quality of Up are Pixar’s previous efforts. This film is phenomenal, and you’d be stupid not to see it.
The official Up website.
[6] Movies
