Did you see this movie - Spirited Away? Its a wonderful treat. It very nicely capped off a series of Japanese films we've rented this month. The film's creator, Hayao Miyazaki, was featured on Turner Classic Movies at the start of this year but we only managed to see one of his works then, My Neighbor Totoro. That was also gorgeously done, much more meditative, but had several bits that reappeared in Spirited Away. Like the little soot sprites, which played the role of ghosts/spirits in Totoro, but here they were enslaved in a ghostly world. I'd love to hear the director explain what all the imaginative symbols mean, though it was totally enjoyable anyway. And it features the smelliest sequence you've ever seen.

  posted by John : 7:47 PM

 
In my small town Ontario high-school one of the jokes was that if your marks (grades) were really bad, you could always get into Lakehead University. So with that impression of the school, its not surpirsing to me that they've made international news by banning Wi-Fi as a health risk. Hey, why not ban electricity itself? Or give George W. Bush an honorary doctorate?
  posted by John : 8:33 AM

 
Working on cleaning house and clearing out boxes of oh-so collectible items that we don't want to store any more. When its all gone, maybe we can allow ourselves to go to estate sales once again. Had a bunch of Look and Life magazines purchased at sales years ago for a buck or two - finding some are worth something. This is a picture of the subjects of Capote's In Cold Blood, as depicted in the film Capote:



and the author:



I like this other one, featuring John Lennon:




  posted by John : 4:16 PM

 
Winter wonder what that's like
Supposed to be flying to D.C. this evening. Flight hasn't been cancelled as yet, so I guess it will go through. Should be a good opportunity to get bumped if the airline is paying a high price since all the flights yesterday were cancelled, though I kinda need to get there tonight. It looks like NYC and you there up in New England will be seeing far worse weather soon.

It's been a couple of years now since I last saw anything significantly like winter, having skipped a couple of Christmas visits to Toronto. But I'm ready for it with the new wool coat I got the other day in preparation. After shopping for it, we stopped in the very small town of Buda (pronounced be-u-dah) for dinner at a great little restaurant, aptly named the Little Texas Bistro. The temperature outside was only 49F, but the wind had really picked up and it felt freezing to us (we've been having a very warm winter so far). I changed my jacket for the new coat, the long kind someone would wear over a suit. It helped make me look a bit more legitimate walking in there without a reservation, though it did still have the label sewn onto the outside of the arm. They had just had a cancellation, so we got a table. Its a small little place, trying to be fancy but still remembering where they are (they hung our coats on the curtain rod of the front window and to get to the restroom you walk thru the kitchen past the dishwashing station - the place is tiny). But the food and atmosphere were excellent. An impromptu Valentine's dinner with Sharon, since I'll be gone on Tues when no doubt it'll be Valentine's with Balentine's, probably watching a basketball game at the hotel bar. Back to work, and the road.

  posted by John : 6:28 AM

 
The Personal Area Network
From C|net Chips that really get under your skin:

KAIST researchers modified an iPod nano and an earphone with its test chips for demonstration purposes. A user would need to keep a finger constantly pressed to a conductor on the iPod, which would send the audio signal through the arm to the earphone. The chips can produce data rates of up to 2 megabits per second while consuming less than 10 microwatts, Song said.

The article makes reference to a patent submitted by Microsoft in 2004, Microsoft patents body power :

"It will be apparent," it says, "that the body may be that of a wide variety of living animals and need not be limited to being a body of a human being."

US Patent #6,754,472

it is to be recognized that the network can be extended by connecting multiple bodies through physical contact, e.g., touching hands as part of a handshake. When two or more bodies are connected physically, the linked bodies form one large bus over which power and/or communications signals can be transmitted.

This would bring a whole new meaning to the expression "Do you want to touch my monkey?".

  posted by John : 6:05 AM

 
Back to work
Finally, a new contract. The long stretch of part time work and unemployment was mostly very enjoyable. But lately as I watch bank balances drop and begin eyeing credit card balance transfer offers instead of throwing them in the trash, I'd been experiencing a familiar kind of worry. But it happens every time. A few weeks after I start looking for jobs online, and update my resume (tuning it to suit a particular job posting), then get no feedback from anyone which makes me think we have to move to Houston or some other awful place for me to find a new job. Then I get a call to get on a flight Sunday night for a new project. And it starts all over again.

This morning I went to turn off my monster.com search agent, to stop solicitations like this from arriving in my inbox:

Hello John,

Schneider National, North America's largest full-load transportation company has truck driver opportunities in your area. We understand that in the past 90 days your posted your resume through Career Builder or partner sites and are looking for a new career or position.

But before I got to the search agent page I was shown a US Army application page that had only a SUBMIT button (not a NO THANKS button like all the other interim-page ads do):

Discover the Benefits of a Career in the U.S. Army Want a job that offers good pay, college tuition programs, great benefits, and much more? The U.S. Army has programs available that help pay for your college education, cash bonuses for certain jobs, and quality-of-life facilities and programs to make sure you and your family are taken care of. The Army has over 150 jobs for Soldiers on Active or Reserve Duty - from working with computers to assisting physicians to fixing helicopters, there's an Army job right for you.

Thankfully I'm too old for them. Or am I?.

  posted by John : 4:54 AM

 
We saw two of the Oscar 'best film' nominees today - Capote and Brokeback Mountain. An interesting double bill, for some of the parallels between them: both take place in American midwest/prarie states around 1963, and both were filmed in Canadian prarie provinces. Much of each film featured a gay man who came to visit another man every few months. I'll stop there - except to say that both also had very tasteful and sparing music scores, having become so used to gratuitous soundtracks in most new films made. Excellent early '60s furnishings on the sets too. Sharon and I both read the Brokeback short story a couple of weeks ago - being advised how GREAT it and the film both were by a D.J. we like on our local NPR station. I thought it was just another the-grass-is-always-greener love story, but this time featuring two Marlboro men. With all the shots of the two dudes camping by the lake with their 1970s Chevy pickup trucks and the jagged grey mountains behind them, I couldn't help but recall too many cigarette ads in old magazines.

We'll do the reading for Capote now after having seen the film -- neither of us recall having read In Cold Blood. I think what everyone is saying about P.S. Hoffman deserving the award for his performance is right on. He must have been waiting to do that film for a long time.

  posted by John : 8:26 PM

 
Had to hunt awhile before finding a site that actually shows those nasty Danish cartoons.

  posted by John : 5:04 PM

 
The Day the Music Died


I wish radio stations weren't so compelled to play American Pie on this day each year. I'm so sick of that song. Why not play several Buddy Holly songs in the same amount of time? I've posted my collection to the Listening Room. Listen for the cricket chirping at the end of I'm Gonna Love You Too.

I heard Dion in an interview with Terry Gross recently. He told of how came close to being on that plane (instead of who is anybody's guess). From Wikipedia:


  posted by John : 9:50 AM

 
Belief science
Here's a fix for the link to some thought provoking articles from New Scientist, very kindly shared by subscriber David Byrne. The Talking Head posts some fun thoughts on the topic of sheep and goats and other creatures too.

The other day I was obsessed with refreshing what I knew and what I never knew about the Church of Scientology. From the time I was a little kid, being handed pamplets in front of their center on Yonge St, I knew they were a group to avoid. Though it appears their members are able to accomplish all kinds of shit with their psych techniques. Even the part about how we're all corrupted with alien entities doesn't strike me as a whole lot wierder than many other religious beliefs. How they sometimes declare someone a Suppressive Person (SP) and punish / ex-communicate them if they start to turn against their cult, sounds a bit like some other Churches to me too. I think what they do is massage your thoughts to make you susceptible to any religious doctrine, then ply you with theirs. I never wanted that kind of massage.

To cap off my investigations, not being able to visit their fun new anti-psychology museum just yet, I found a copy of the much hounded South Park satire that aired last November instead. Enjoy this rather large RealMedia file

  posted by John : 11:57 AM

 
Curly Oxide & Vic Thrill
These two musical friends from Queens were the subject of an excellent This American Life episode (their segment starts at the six minute mark). Now Tina Fey is working on the film script. Somehow I'm certain the radio documentary will be better.

  posted by John : 4:16 AM

 
Out of touch with local events



Surfing on Daniel Johnston, after reading Alan's kudos of the double CD - half covers by famous artists, half his own stuff. I guess I noticed that new Baja Fresh chain downtown, and always loved that mural. But I never knew D.J. painted it himself, and totally missed out on the fight for its preservation two years ago.

  posted by John : 2:12 AM

 
This is so twisted: Evangelical Filmmakers Criticized for Hiring Gay Actor

  posted by John : 12:23 AM

 
3D Scanner


Spotted on engadget, this product is one of those previously out of reach for consumers that perhaps soon will become a feature of mainstream gadgets. What are the applications for which we consumers would want to have 3D representations of physical objects in our computers? Makes me remember those arrays of small stainless steel pins that you could press your hand (or face) into and it would hold the shape - marketed as the 'pinpression'. I was no less intruiged as a child by the 2D version - a carpenter's tool to grab the shape of an intricate surface - known as a contour gauge. I found both fun to play with, but not particularly useful.

Perhaps taking this technology further would yield a video camera that can create 3D animations of what it sees.

  posted by John : 8:29 AM