Archive for: 2009
What I Used To Write
Talk about a blast from the past. A few months ago my folks found a few binders full of notes and writings from long ago, and asked me to take a look at it before throwing it out. What a find!
Game Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum
I’d heard the hype about this game, and eventually got to play the first few chapters at a friend’s place. I was so hooked that I decided to rent a disc and console so I could play it for myself. Everything about it is excellent, from the graphics to the gameplay to the story. Everything.
We are the champions!
Well, when I say “we,” I don’t include me personally. My team ended up second-to-last place in the seeding, and then were eliminated right away on the second day. Still, I had a great time at the Queen Vicki tournament [...]
That Last Step’s a Doozy
“Do one thing that scares you every day,” the bumper sticker says. In that case, I think I’ve saved up enough terror for the next couple of months. Because this weekend, some friends and I went to Whistler for zip-lining.
Apology to Alan Turing
The UK government apologises for its treatment of Alan Turing.
A pointless feel-good exercise? Too little too late? A fitting tribute to a national hero? I don’t know. Maybe all of the above, but on the whole I’m happy with it. Turing damn well deserves some recognition for being one of the founding fathers of computer science, not to mention his cracking of the Enigma ciphers.
PNE
Hey, who wants to see shots of the PNE dog show, the ferris wheel, and a spider flashing its privates at me? You came to the right place.
Queer Film Festival 2009: a few reviews
A good crop of movies this year! I didn’t see as many as I wanted, due to previous commitments (or in one case getting the show times mixed up), but I had a great time at this festival. Here are some of my thoughts on the movies I saw, in chronological order.
A couple of belated book reviews
Hey, didn’t I resolve in January to read fiction and then to blog about it? Why yes I did.
Two things you only see at night
Last night was the first installment of the Celebration of Light. I was exhausted from work and volleyball, possibly coming down with something, and I actually considered not going. But hey: I’m right next to the beach, it was Canada Night, and I’d get to see how this new camera of mine handled fireworks.
Verdict: awesome.
Relics
Quebec (the province and the city) has a lot of history. In Vancouver, “old” just means turn of the century (Gastown, some of Strathcona and New Westminster). But Vieux-Québec? Try turn of the eighteenth century, then we’ll talk. Everything just feels old, every street corner has a hundred stories to tell.
Jogging on the Seawall
For the last week, I’ve been taking advantage of the nice weather to get some more exercise done. On Tuesday I decided to get off the SkyTrain at Science World station and use my own two feet to get the rest of the way home. I’d done that just once before, taking a direct route through Yaletown.
Chaos and Numbers
I finally have the bones of my new design. It’ll be a 3-column layout, 960px wide. Spent so much time fiddling with the widths, and then it hit me: all I had to do was take a clue from the 960 grid system and let column widths be fractions of the total width. Easy-peasy.
Movie Review: Star Trek
That was awesome. And not quite what I expected, which was even more awesome.
Movie Review: Wolverine
Not enough naked Hugh Jackman, in my opinion. Not enough Gambit. And I squeed a little when Patrick Stewart came on screen.
What’s inspiring me
AdamSchwabe.com: a wonderfully clean, minimalist site. Not just in the look; note that a lot of common blog functionality is missing: Category listings or tag cloud? Browsable archives? Blogroll? It has none of these things, and doesn’t especially need them. [...]
A Heron by Still Creek
This morning, I just happened to see a Great Blue Heron by Still Creek, about fifty feet from Gilmore. There wasn’t anyone nearby, so I approached very slowly and quietly.
Book Review: The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky
Wow, that took a while. So much for my New Year’s resolution to read a novel a month, eh?
I started on this book in late January, after skipping through three quarters of the Mortal Engines quartet. Then I was taking a class, which left me with very little time and energy for such frivolities. But the class ended, and on Easter weekend I decided to pick it up again. I was immediately hooked, and devoured it in a three-day binge of more-or-less nonstop reading.
