23 January 2006, lunch time
I read Memoirs of a Geisha several years ago. I didn’t expect the film adaptation to be any good. There is so much in the book that I couldn’t see them cramming into the movie. The book, and the movie, are about how a young girl from a fishing village ends up becoming one of the most celebrated Geisha of her time. The movie actually is pretty true to the book. It really only veers away from the story at a couple points. There are several subplots and people dropped from the film, but they did a good job keeping the core story intact. There are couple good reasons you may want to check the movie out. I think Zhang Ziyi’s dance sequence midway through the film might be worth the price of admission; it’s very cool. Gong Li does an excellent job as the trampy, drunk, and mean, Hatsumomo. Gong Li is awesome. The reviews for this film have been mixed. I though the film was alright; it’s not that good, and it’s not that bad. There are some great scenes, but overall the movie is nothing special.
The official Memoirs of a Geisha web site.
[4] Movies
23 January 2006, lunch time
I watched Munich on Saturday with Carvill and Mezan. I had pretty high expectations for the film after watching the kick-ass trailer. The movie is about an autonomous group of Mossad agents hunting down the terrorists who were involved in the murder of the Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics. The movie is quite good, but not as good as I would have hoped. Everyone does a good job playing there respective parts, and the storyline is interesting, I just felt the film was missing something. I have been told that Sword of Gideon is a better retelling of this story, so I will need to check that out some time. Both Munich and Sword of Gideon are based on the book Vegence, by G. Jonas. I still think this film is worth watching. It is a good spy movie.
The official Munich home page.
[1] Movies
21 January 2006, mid-afternoon
I watched Underworld:Evolution last night with Steph, Mezan and Steph’s friend Michelle. Mezan and I had Sushi at Toshi Sushi before hand, which was very good, before making our way over to Paramount Cinema. Mezan had doubts about how good the film would be, but really now, how bad can a film be which has these 4 key elements: Vampires, Werewolves, Vampire-Werewolves, Kate Beckinsale in Leather and Vinyl? I think we all found the movie enjoyable. It isn’t brilliant, and I don’t think it’s as good as the first, but it is definitely a fun film to watch. It is much more gratuitous, in all respects, than the first one. The film is quite gory, and quite sexed up. Kate Beckinsale was looking wicked-hot, as usual.
The official Underworld: Evolution web site
[2] Movies
20 January 2006, early afternoon
I bought a Flickr Pro account the other day. I’m not quite sure why I didn’t get one sooner. I have never thought they were particularly expensive, but at the same time I suppose I have never had a big reason for getting one.
My photoblog isn’t well suited for posting a set of photos. The few times I have used Flickr in the past, it was to post a set of photos from a day or night out. For example, here is a set of photos I took on Caroline’s adventure around Toronto. A few of the photos in that set are also on my photoblog, but many of them are not, either because I didn’t think they were interesting enough, or because I didn’t want a weeks worth of very similar photographs.
Now that I have a Pro account, I am trying to think of the best way to use it. The upload limits for Pro users are basically non-existent. With unlimited sets you have a lot more freedom in how you can arrange your photographs. I have started cross posting my photographs to Flickr, and will probably continue to do so. I want to figure out the best way to move all my old posts from We Must Abuse the Broadband over to Flickr. I’ve been looking at how to do this via a computer program. We’ll see how that goes.
Anyone join any interesting groups on Flickr? Anyone have good suggestions on what to do with the account? You can expect a boatload of pictures from Tokyo up there some time soon.
[2] Photography | Technology
19 January 2006, the wee hours
I watched Brokeback Mountain tonight with my roommate Lori. No one else I knew was really interested in seeing it, despite the great reviews. It’s an excellent film. The movie is about two gay cowboys, and how they deal with the affair they have over a 20 year period. The film is depressing. Heath Ledger does an excellent job; I was pleasantly surprised. The acting was good all around really. Visually the film is stunning. Ang Lee or his director of photography has done a wonderful job filming this movie. If you haven’t watched the movie yet, you most definitely should. Gay cowboys aren’t that scary.
The official Brokeback Mountain web site.
[3] Movies
18 January 2006, the wee hours
I love Canadian news. Jack Layton is on Newsworld now, and people aren’t pulling their punches when asking him questions. Mansbridge in particular is on his ass after each question has been asked. Layton is doing a really good job answering questions so far, though he does need Mansbridge to prod him at times. He just answered a question on the NDPs stance on public and private healthcare quite well. His answer on strategic voting was also particularly good. My opinion on this is the same as Layton’s: you should vote with your heart. If you can’t do that, then your democratic system of government is broken. First-past the post is what we are stuck with for now, but at the very least your vote is used when determining funding for the federal parties. More than that, your vote adds legitimacy to the parties, whether that translates to seats or not. The NDP doubled their popular support in the last election. You need to help them double it again. Yes, I am telling you how to vote.
Politics | Current Events
17 January 2006, lunch time
I will write a proper travel diary at some point. Till then, I will leave you with this one tid-bit of information: about 80% of the young ladies in Tokyo wear high-heels and micro-skirts. In fact, I think 80% might be a conservative estimate on my part. If you think those numbers aren’t that impressive, remember that when I was in Tokyo the temperature was hovering around zero-degrees centigrade—it was pretty damn cold. Yet, some how, despite the freezing weather, young women would come out in throngs showing off their legs. I’m not quite sure why micro-skirts are so popular. My cousin suspects it is because the skirts are seen as cute, as opposed to scandalous or sexy. I didn’t talk to any girls on the subject—Shima would destroy me—so I’ll have to agree with my cousin on this.
Most, if not all, the young women we saw in Japan wearing high-heels walk like they are crippled. I’m not trying to be mean; I am very serious. If you visit Tokyo, head to Shibuya or Harajuku, some place with lots of young women, and watch them walk. Girls walk with their feet angled in (their toes pointing towards one another). Each time they take a step, the leg in motion crosses slightly infront of the other leg. It’s strange to see once. It’s stranger yet when almost every single girl you see does it. Gary and I actually started trying to look for young girls who walked properly in heels. I think we saw a couple.
I am not sure what will be in style when I am in Tokyo next. I can only imagine how scandalous the young women dress in the summer. I wonder how our fashion-sense and style looks to a tourist?
[2] Life
16 January 2006, the wee hours
Here are three reports of the same incident: Murder in Pungudutivu, Tharsini raped before murder, and Untold Story Of Punguduthivu Rape Case. A girl was presumably raped and killed. The problem is of course determining who did the raping and killing. TamilNet has one opinion, the Independent has another. The University Teachers for Human Rights presents the case very matter of factly.
Here is another pair of stories on a similar subject: Two women shot dead in Manipay and Jaffna Women Banned From Interacting With Army By LTTE. The difference in reporting is interesting. TamilNet commonly reports on stories of “Unknown Gunmen”. I ask you, besides the army, who could possibly be shooting up Jaffna? It is a shame TamilNet’s crack team of reporters hasn’t cracked that nut. The Independent is a bit more forthright on who it thinks is doing the shooting. I suspect they are probably on the money.
In my opinion, the best reporting on Sri Lanka comes from the University Teachers for Human Rights briefings, but they are very infrequent. Everything else is so biased it might as well be propaganda; the Independent and TamilNet are so biased it’s embarrassing reading their “news” coverage.
Update: I have it on good authority that the Independent is run by crack-pots.
[6] Current Events
15 January 2006, early evening
When Tyler introduced me to Haran, I had already met him. I had been introduced to him by my friend Yang several months earlier. Tyler had been witness to what I will call the all the Tamil people you know already know all the other Tamil people you will ever meet effect. When I met M.I.A., I had assumed that this was the first time I had met her; this was a foolish mistake on my part—especially since we both lived in England at the same time.
Now, when I mentioned seeing a Tamil rapper to my parents, they thought that was kind of neat, and didn’t think anything more of it. Today, my mom hands me the phone. It’s an “aunt” from London, one of our close family friends. After some discussion of how our respective new years were, how work is going, and other such things, she starts asking about M.I.A., because it turns out the girl is her (much) younger cousin. They all lived in London when we did. My mom & dad remember M.I.A. and her family and am shocked that I don’t. I can’t remember last week, let alone what I was up to when I was 4, so I think this shock is unfounded. It’s a strange, small world. When my parents were last in London, some time in the summer, they were told that such-and-such’s daughter was a rapper that was doing OK in the UK, but was much more popular overseas. Why they would assume there were two such Tamil rappers is beyond me, but they did.
Do you know any Tamil people? Chances are I know them. Seriously.
[4] Life
14 January 2006, evening time
After dinner last night, my friends and I watched It’s All Gone Pete Tong. The movie is about a DJ, Frankie Wilde, who is going deaf. (Well, I suppose the film is really about him overcoming his vices and redeeming himself as a person.) It’s a very funny movie. Paul Kaye does an awesome job playing a coked-up drunk-ass DJ. There are so many funny moments in the film. It’s very enjoyable and well worth watching.
The official It’s All Gone Pete Tong web site.
Movies
12 January 2006, early morning
It’s 4:01 AM and I’ve been up since around 2:00 AM. I have such horrible jet lag. I should check to see how Steph and Gary are holding up. I need to “wake up” in 3 hours for work. I can’t being to describe how much I am looking forward to that.
[8] Life
10 January 2006, mid-afternoon
I think Apple has a warehouse full of new Intel powered Macintosh computers. They have already developed Intel versions of all of their computer lines. The rumors were running wild with what would be announced at this expo. Apple more or less released the exact opposite of what people were expecting. Intel iBooks? You wish, we have MacBook Pros now. An Intel mini? No dice, we have new Intel iMacs. (Nevermind that the last revision of the iMac is something like 2 months old now.) It will be interesting to see just how fast these new machines are. The chips are all dual core (which is like having two different CPUs inside one chip) and each core is apparently faster than a G5.
MacRumors provided good coverage of the expo, as usual.
[4] Apple Computers
30 December 2005, early afternoon
Joel from Joel on Software posted an essay today entitled The Perils of JavaSchools. His main point is a simple one: dumbing down Computer Science programs helps no one. In particular, he talks about schools that only use Java in their curriculum. In doing so, such schools fail to teach what Joel considers to be two important things: pointers and recursion. First off, I should say that I don’t think either is particularly challenging stuff. Secondly, you can cover this material in Java.
Read the rest of this post. (643 words)
[5] Computer Science
28 December 2005, lunch time
There are several buses that leave from the bus platform where I wait for my bus at Kipling station. Since I know the difference between the numbers 30, 192, and 191, I usually don’t mix any of these up. I take the 191A to work. That A is important. There have been two occasions where I have taken the 191 instead of the 191A. The difference between the 191 and the 191A is that one bus turns onto Dixon, and takes me to where I work, while the other sails past Dixon and is a thoroughly useless bus. (The problem is that I can never remember which bus I normally take.) The first time I missed the bus, I got off somewhere in the middle of nowhere and caught the bus heading Southbound. During rush hour the Southbound bus doesn’t stop where I work, but the nice bus driver let me off on the edge of the highway. Today, I noticed my error a little bit after the bus I was on skipped the Dixon exit. Again, the bus driver was nice enough to let me off on the side of the highway. I can now say I have crossed a highway.
[2] Life
Frank Costanza: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had—but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.
Kramer: What happened to the doll?
Frank: It was destroyed. But out of that, a new holiday was born : A Festivus for the rest of us!
If you always get up late
You’ll never be on time
If you always get up late
You’re never gonna be on time
And that’s a shame
Cause I like you
I never see you.
—Swimmers by Broken Social Scene
22 December 2005, lunch time
I’ve had my share of bus drivers that like to wait till you sprint all the way to the front door of the bus before driving away. They dangle the prospect of catching your bus, and then take it away. Jerks. One of the guys that drives the 191 Rocket in the morning is a bus drivers from the other end of the spectrum. For starters, he waited for a lady who works in my office before leaving, because he knew she is sometimes late for the bus. As we were pulling out of Kipling station, he noticed someone had just missed the bus, and turned around and came back to get them. That was nice. If you miss the 191 Rocket, you need to take the Kipling and Dixon buses, which both suck in equal parts.
[1] Life
22 December 2005, terribly early in the morning
Shima uses Kinja to see when her friends have posted new articles on their blogs. I use Bloglines for this purpose, mostly because it works a lot better. Kinja is nice and simple, and I always thought that was its edge. I made Shima a Kinja digest because I thought it was simpler than Bloglines to use (I don’t think this is the case anymore). Today, a new version of Kinja was rolled out; this new Kinja is ugly. Now, that’s not a real criticism of the new design, that’s my subjective opinion on its aesthetics. Here are a few, real, criticisms I have with the new system:
There are no direct links to the sites you read on your digest page anymore, only links to the individual article entries. To find a link to a site you subscribe to, you have to go to the site’s summary page first, which has a link to the actual subscribed page on it. (Sometimes a site might have several new entries in a row. I used to just go to the sites themselves to read all the new entries, rather than open up several tabs to read each one.)- The links on a web site’s summary page open in a new window—come on, what year is this?
- You can tag your digests now. What value does a tagged digest provide? I haven’t a clue. What exactly would Shima tag her digest? Is she supposed to describe herself or her friends? Or both?
- The site takes up more screen real estate now (although the actual content of interest is small and on the left-side of the screen)
Before the roll out, service was out for several days. No one seemed to notice; people with blogs like to bitch—a lot—and yet no one seems to have complained about Kinja being down for a few days. I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions as to what the radio silence means.
Update: It’s the morning now, and reading this post again, I can see it is quite snarky. Sorry about that. Also, the irony of me saying no one bitches about Kinja online, while bitching about Kinja online, is not lost on me.
Update Jan 18 2006: Well someone fixed the no direct links to your subscribed homepages problem—good job!
Web Design
21 December 2005, lunch time
For the most part, everyone in the world knows how King Kong ends. As such, for the movie to be compelling it needs be more then a series of good plot twists; you need to leave the theatre with something more than knowing how the movie ends. Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong is excellent. For a movie about a giant monkey, it’s surprisingly touching. This is probably due in part to the incredible special effects, which really do bring Kong to life. I would suspect credit for this goes to both Andy Serkis (Golum from Lord of the Rings) who plays Kong, as well as the animators who turn Serkis’ movements into what you see on the screen. The campy 30s style story also works well, and doesn’t feel all too campy in this retelling. Naomi Watts gives a good performance, as does Adrien Brody. Jack Black, who plays the jerk of a movie producer, plays his part perfectly. People have complained of the film’s slow start, but I think the pacing is important for the movie. More so, the last 2 hours of the film really fly by. I think Kong is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. It is stunning to watch. I read a review in the Star that said something to the effect of, “If you don’t love this movie, you’re incapable of loving movies.” Strong words, but I would have to agree. Watch this movie.
The official King Kong web site.
Movies
20 December 2005, lunch time
I have been patiently waiting for the Final Fantasy IV remake to be released for the Gameboy. Final Fantasy IV was released as Final Fantasy II here in North America, and was probably the most expensive games my brother and I had ever bought. I think it cost just over $90 when you factored in the taxes. It was a really expensive cartridge. The game was excellent, with a compelling story and great game play. Compared to the very generic story in Final Fantasy I for the NES, Final Fantasy II was something else. I picked the game up this Monday. I had actually forgotten it was coming out so soon. It’s just as good as I remembered. I’m only a tiny bit into the game thus far. They’ve fixed the dialog (a lot apparently), and touched the graphics up ever so slightly, but as far as I can tell, it’s a very faithful port of the original.
[1] Video Games
19 December 2005, late morning
Amazon never ceases to amaze me. The order I placed on Friday shipped to me today (Monday). First of all, I chose free shipping, so it usually takes them 2-3 days to even process your order. Also, it normally should take them a couple days to deliver the package via Canada Post. Next day shipping wouldn’t have been any faster. I think they must be working extra hard for the holiday season.
[3] Life
17 December 2005, mid-afternoon
I bought R.E.M.’s greatest hits album Thursday night. I had heard it playing at the Yellow Griffin a few weeks back, and wanted to get it ever since. In the liner notes for the album Peter Buck explains the back-story for each song. he has this to say about Orange Crush:
I must have played this song onstage over three hundred times, and I still don’t know what the fuck it’s about.
The album is really good. I’m enjoying it a lot.
Music
16 December 2005, the wee hours
They let us leave work early today due to the volume of snow falling from the sky. The ground was very wet. When I got home, I decided I would shovel the walkway and sidewalk of the house I live in. I haven’t shoveled the snow in ages; it was very satisfying. I think the fact it took me 5 minutes to clear the snow around my house had something to do with the pleasure I found in the activity. I never want to shovel my drive way in Scarborough, its very long. I milled around at home for an hour before leaving to meet my cousins on Queen St. The snow hadn’t let up, and I shoveled the ground once more before leaving. My cousins and I met at the Chapters on Queen. I don’t feel bad loitering in a Chapters. I’m not sure why, but there is something faceless and corporate about the stores; I think it’s because they are so huge. After dinner I returned to Chapters to look for possible Christmas gifts. I found none. I made my way back home. The snow had still not let up. The ground was a slushy mess. The bottoms of my jeans were soaked. I decided I’d clear the walkway and sidewalk one last time before calling it a night.
Stand in the place where you live, now face north
Think about direction, wonder why you haven’t before
Now stand in the place where you work, now face west
Think about the place where you live, wonder why you haven’t before—Stand by REM
[5] Life
14 December 2005, the wee hours
There is a cat that lives in my Animal Crossing town called Monique. She collects pink furniture. She was feeling sick today. I was going to get her medicine, but the store in my town was closed for renovations. Luckily, you can play Animal Crossing: Wild World online. I logged into Animal Crossing Live and informed the web site I was looking to travel to another town. A few moments later I was visiting Joebilly in Lattleto. (I am very impressed with how well Animal Crossing Live works; it is a shame the site is so ugly.) I wandered around her town for a bit, talking to the other animals and grabbing some new fruit, and then bought myself some medicine before I left to go back to my town. I visited Monique, who was still feeling ill, and gave her the medicine I bought. She perked right up and thanked me for my troubles. Animal Crossing is strangely engrossing.
[3] Video Games | Nintendo DS
13 December 2005, lunch time
I use Quicksilver to open applications in Mac OS X quickly. This is one thing Quicksilver does well. However, to use Quicksilver as a glorified application launcher is a bit of a waste. Yesterday I thought I’d try and figure out how to add events to my iCal calender using Quicksilver. I had already installed the iCal plugin, so I had two actions I could do with a snippet of text: create an iCal event or create a To-Do in iCal. The plugin is quite smart. If you create a new event, it analyzes the text you enter to figure out when the event takes place. For example, “Dinner tomorrow with Prasanna” gets scheduled tomorrow, though the time seems to picked in an arbitrary fashion; “Concert Thursday with Matt” gets scheduled on Thursday of this week; if you enter an actual date, it will schedule it on that date. The redundant date information is a small nuisance, but is worth the productivity boost you get form being able to enter iCal events from anywhere without having to use iCal itself. I haven’t been able to find any documentation whatsoever for this plugin. I feel like asking for the source code so I can read through it and figure out what it does myself.
Update: The documentation for the plugin is now online.
[3] Technology
