My 3 Latest from Google Buzz:
"Grapeful Dead".
Good article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/movies/films-in-defense-of-slow-and-boring.html?nl=movies&emc=mua7s
Bird Dream of Olympus Mons! Into the Mountain!
Mcdonalds extra value meal
by admin on Mar.17, 2010, under Uncategorized
Was in Westmount today. Had some coupons and felt like eatin some cheap garbage but waiting in line in the dimly lit, poorly staffed mceedees was an exercise in inintended dieting. Place was Goya-esque; the human wrecks in there scarfing down down their chow reminding me of the fate that befalls all who frequent the golden arches. Even in luxurious westmount…
The Black Hole (1979) – Disney
by admin on Mar.10, 2010, under Uncategorized
I bought this movie on DVD about a month ago – I guess it was recently re-released – because I had vivid but incomplete memories of it from my childhood. What I remembered was a visually rich, tripped out, sci-fi masterpiece starring Orson Welles. Well it just doesn’t have Orson Welles, but the rest of the pieces are there. The Black Hole came out in in 1979, so, after Star Wars, and there’s no real comparison in the fx department but while a little dated the fx are still stunning. Great color, great design, and a great classic sci-fi story with some Faust/Moby Dick thrown in – think Asimov/Bradbury style – this is a very dark movie considering it was put out by Disney. The madman isn’t Welles, but another dude, Maximillian Schell and it doesn’t really make much difference. He’s just as over the top and plays the grandiose mad scientist just as well as Welles probably could. Obviously the story revolves (hehe) around a massive black hole and our heroes, including the captain played by the guy from Jackie Brown, need to escape from it. Problem is, mad man Reinhardt wants to go into it! Cue that awesome, hysterical and terrifying theme – the music along with everything else is surprisingly great. This film clearly owes a ton to the more intellectual 2001 and to scores of books, but the visual realization of this Christian iconography laden movie is superb. The heavy use of some overtly Christian motifs do get a little over done at times, but also grounds the film in a rich tradition and certainly makes for some exciting scenes. If you watch it, try to get past the cheesy beginning (did I mention Ernest Borgnine also stars!?) because its certainly time well spent, if like me, you’ve got a predilection towards sci-fi the way it was apparently still being done just a few years before I was born – ie the 70’s. Oh, and according to IMDB of the fellas responsible for the visuals was a guy named Robert McCall who also worked on 2001 – which explains why the main ship, the Cygnus looks so awesome.
Phil’s blog – SEO + History?
by admin on Feb.16, 2010, under Uncategorized
The other day I was harassed by Phil Andraos, a former co-worker of mine, and general good dude. He was trying to convince me to add a ‘blog roll’ to this installation so that both of our (or maybe just his) SEO stats would improve. Well I did that today, and added his blog first. Happy Phil? All kidding aside, Phil knows his stuff, and he’s a big part of Bluesponge, the agency I used to work at. One of the things Phil knows is history. He and I spent many a lunch blabbling away about history (we both did degrees at McGill in said dusty discipline), and in response to the Haitian earthquake, he posted this great little article. Nice work there Phil, I’m glad someone wrote that, because its a dimension of that tragedy that should not be ignored or, as history students know, repeated.
My Furni watch & local design
by admin on Feb.10, 2010, under Uncategorized
I got a sweet Furni watch for Xmas back in December, and I really dug it. Sadly, it broke last week.
For a little background: Furni is a local design studio here in Montreal that do some pretty nice work, highlighted in my opinion by their Casio-esque watches that have a really nice, modern minimalism that I really enjoy. They’re reminiscent of the ‘future’ as it was once represented in my younger days in the late 80’s when technology was still predominantly clunky, black and had no real user interface, or certainly nothing with much resolution to it.
Anyway, turns out there really good guys, and after my email about my busted watch, it seems they’re more than willing to replace it. Which brings me to the real point of this post: support your local designers/craftsmen and you’re going to get some solid dependability and real customer service in return. Instead of shipping my watch thousands of kilometers and jumping through hoops, I’ll be getting a replacement asap after just a single (well, two really) email. That’s the way to treat people, and that’s why I’ll continue to be recommending these guys to friends.
HTML 5 Apple? You take the High Road, and I’ll take the Low…
by admin on Feb.10, 2010, under computers, research
So, webOs uses HTML 5. Android supports all sorts of open standards. The iPhone (and iPad) don’t support Flash. HTML 5 is probably gonna devour some aspects of Flash development, especially on mobile devices (i.e. things that aren’t netbooks, or more capable PC’s). So, the big question I have is: how much support will Apple provide for HTML 5 (particularly the canvas object) in the version of Mobile Safari that debuts on the iPad?
I think this is gonna be more than somewhat relevant, and I can’t see Apple not supporting it. Anyone familiar with some relatively high profile projects (like Mozilla’s Bespin) knows that the canvas object (and HTML 5) is going to start making some serious headway as a platform to deliver web based apps.
I’m a proponent of building web apps as opposed to dedicated, single platform apps, and while there’s going to be some difficult hurdles in terms of distribution (i.e. no App Store for web apps), I think that this is going to be an important alternative direction a lot of folks are going to take.
Of course, how they’ll make money is a whole other story. One way, I suppose would be to try to build hybrid apps, ones that use the iPhone SDK’s uiwebview objects to load locally stored web apps. But then again, just because these hybrids can use the webview, doesn’t mean they have to store, or access most or any content online. The canvas object and HTML 5 allowing for local data storage may (probably will, as in webOs) provide enough leverage to create stand alone applications that don’t need to depend on ‘cloud’ based, or other online services to be useful.
Now, obviously these are all just semi-random musings I’ve pieced together for this post, but I have experimented with regular old XHTML, JS, and CSS, and of course Objective C, to build a hybrid iPhone app in the past and in terms of development, I would say it was quite easy. I can only imagine that with the possibilities of CSS 3, HTML 5, etc, the low road might well get me to Scotland afore ye…
Moved to WordPress
by admin on Feb.06, 2010, under Uncategorized
I moved all the old blogger posts over to this wordpress installation, which was super easy to do. So now I’ve got some real hosting and a proper domain name etc. Wp seems like a decent enough choice, for now anyway.
Hello world!
by admin on Feb.04, 2010, under Uncategorized
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Resurrection
by admin on Jan.29, 2010, under Uncategorized
Gonna start posting stuff on here again. This time, more rants, ravings and opinions. heheh.
The best there is…
by admin on Jul.18, 2008, under Uncategorized
Check it:
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21OH0wlkfbc
Great old CBC program on the net
by admin on Mar.11, 2008, under Uncategorized
My friend, Victoria sent this along to me via the ol interweb. This is an article about the net, aired on CBC back in the day. It goes so far as to deal with emoticons and is surprisingly prescient about the various issues that the net would affect.
