January 2006

Movie weekend

Posted on by Patrick

I saw six movies this weekend…

In chrono­log­i­cal order:

Fan­tas­tic Four–not so fantastic.
Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy–enjoyed it about as much as the first time I saw it (which is to say, a fair amount).
Water–Heart-wrench­ing and very well done.
Every­thing Is Illu­mi­nat­ed–I want to see this again. By turns hilar­i­ous and poignant.
Under­world Evo­lu­tion–Like my friend said, they did­n’t do any­thing new this time out, but the cos­tume was still fantastic.
Equi­lib­ri­um–It real­ly, real­ly wants to be The Matrix, but it isn’t quite.

More details on a cou­ple of these lat­er. Right now I’m tired. G’night.

Birthday fun

Posted on by Patrick

So my wife’s birth­day fell last night. We had a qui­et sup­per at home, then I gave her a cou­ple of books–It’s a Dog’s Life, Snoopy and a giant, 30-foot fold­out illus­trat­ed his­to­ry of the world. Then we had some friends over for a game of canas­ta (which the dudes won, after a shaky start) while we drank two and a half bot­tles of wine and six shots of Blue Bols between us. A good time was had by all.

Einstein biography for $3

Posted on by Patrick

Einstein book coverWent down to For­bid­den Flavours tonight to buy my sis­ter a birth­day gift (shhh, nobody tell her), and I nat­u­ral­ly went into the used book­store in the back. They had copies of Greg Bear’s Eon and Eter­ni­ty in there, but the book I end­ed up buy­ing was Ein­stein: the Life and Times. Looks fas­ci­nat­ing, but it’ll have to wait till I’m done the oth­er books in my stack.

From the back cover:

Here is the real Ein­stein: The boy grow­ing up in the Swiss Alps, the young man caught in an unhap­py first mar­riage, the pas­sion­ate paci­fist who ago­nized over his role in the mak­ing of The Bomb, the indif­fer­ent Zion­ist who was asked to head the Israeli state, the physi­cist who believed in God. Here, too, are the mod­ern giants who touched Ein­stein’s life: Franklin Roo­sevelt, Sig­mund Freud, Madame Curie, and Ben-Gurion.

I’ve long been fas­ci­nat­ed by Ein­stein, though I know rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle about him. I know that his Nobel prize was not for rel­a­tiv­i­ty but for his work on the pho­to­elec­tric effect; I know that he stub­born­ly refused to believe in the impli­ca­tions of quan­tum mechan­ics; and that’s about all. I’m look­ing for­ward to learn­ing more, more, more.

How can you tell it’s election night?

Posted on by Patrick

CBC.ca is was farked. Update–scant min­utes lat­er, I’m get­ting through. Still.

Appar­ent­ly I did throw my vote away, since the incum­bent got re-elect­ed. Not that I’m surprised.

Judo–only three of us there, me and a white/yellow striped belt and Dar­cy, the head instruc­tor. So we did­n’t do hane-goshi; instead, Mark–the white/yellow stripe–went through his throws for his yel­low belt, and I went over the ones I’ll need to know for my brown belt, and then I did the first three sets of nage-no-kata, which I will also need to know for my brown belt. Then I came home.

Voted.

Posted on by Patrick

Yeah. The can­di­date that usu­al­ly gets elect­ed ’round these here parts is not who I vot­ed for. I just can’t help hear­ing that Simp­sons bit, where Kang and Kodos are run­ning in the US elec­tion, and some guy in the audi­ence says, “Why, I think I’ll just vote for a third-par­ty can­di­date”, and one of the aliens says, in that delight­ful boom­ing voice they have, “Go ahead. Throw your vote away.”

I tossed my vote into the æther. And now, because of a new/old law (I think it was struck down by a provin­cial court before last elec­tion, but rein­stat­ed before the cur­rent one), I have to wait till 9PM to see any results from any­where in the coun­try. Weird. Oh well.

Hane-goshi Tonight at judo: Hane-goshi, the spring­ing hip throw: one of my favourites. Video | Ani­mat­ed .gif. Whee!

Plans

Posted on by Patrick

So I’m work­ing on a sto­ry, called Earth Fleet (ten­ta­tive­ly), and I want to make sure that I do a page* a day.  I have about 40 pages so far, and I want to set up a sec­tion on my site where I can upload the pages as they’re writ­ten. Which means I can either (a) find a tool that’ll let me restrict access to the pages, or (b) build one myself. I’m lean­ing towards (b); I don’t think it’ll be too dif­fi­cult, and it’s a lit­tle spe­cial­ized to expect to find some­thing pre-built in the OSS** sites on the Internet.

Basi­cal­ly this is a “com­ing soon” announce­ment. Once Earth Fleet is done, I hope to add oth­er projects.
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* A page being defined as one page of 12-point Couri­er type, sin­gle-spaced (I’ll blow it out to dou­ble-spaced before print­ing it for sub­mis­sion, when the nov­el­’s done and done), with one-inch mar­gins all round, or in oth­er words, about 400–450 words.

** Open-Source Software.