March 2008 Archives (15 posts)
Best hockey team photo ever
I’ve been in at least a dozen team photos but this is by far the best team photo I’ve ever seen. Pure magic! Think of the poor kid in the second row.
This image popped up in a video presentation by Cabel Sasser of Panic. If you’re at all interested in application design, Panic, or indie Mac developers then you’ll find this video really interesting and geeky in a good way.
Posted in Humour and OS X Software at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
Amusing Keith Richards Interview
GQ magaznine has an amusing interview with Keith Richards — THE GQ&A: KEITH RICHARDS.
I love that interviewer Michael Hainey includes this tidbit at the beginning of his interview:
Excuse me, reader, but I’d be remiss if I did not interrupt here to tell you briefly about how Keith speaks. It’s not speaking, actually. Or at least not what you think of as speaking. It’s more of a slur-mumble. Words run together and then get coated in cigarette smoke and that thick accent. It makes you wish he provided his own subtitles. I mean, when I transcribed the tapes from this interview, I had to listen to each sentence maybe three times to decode it.
The interview is conducted at Keith’s office in Soho where a lot of bizarre stories and bits of information are revealed — Richards and Jagger used to steal each other’s “bitches”, Keith uses a knife to hold his pants up, cuts his own hair and wears women’s clothing. (Via kottke.org)
Posted in Music at 9:32 PM | Comments (0)
Tear-off wine labels
Oxford Landing’s South Australian Shiraz sports a tear-off label to help you remember the name of the wine. Brilliant package design. More info and a couple of photos at TheDieline.com website.
Posted in Design and Food at 5:54 PM | Comments (1)
Mario Kart Wii
Mario Kart Wii comes out on April 27 and you can play with up to 11 people. How crazy is that? The steering wheel for the Wii Remote looks interesting. Should be a fun game.
Posted in News at 5:49 PM | Comments (1)
Type usage in Pixar titles
Thunder Chunky has an interesting interview with Susan Bradley of Pixar in which she discusses title design for Pixar films and previous projects.
Posted in Design and Motion Graphics at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)
Bell Canada’s traffic throttling
A few Canadian ISPs are furious about Bell Canada’s recent traffic throttling. Rogers has been throttling network traffic for a few years now and Bell has begun to do the same. I’m a Bell DSL user and I haven’t noticed any significant slowdowns but ars technica is reporting that Bell will be throttling all traffic by April 7.
Posted in Web at 2:05 AM | Comments (0)
Tarantino Film Mashup
Paul Proulx from Hobnox put together this mashup of Tarantino films that I think is outstanding. He also put together a video montage of films by the Coen Brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson. Anderson was so impressed with the video that he posted it on his own website.
Posted in Movies at 7:28 PM | Comments (0)
The Subaru Legacy GT Money Pit
My wife’s Subaru or should I say $ubaru needs a new exhaust system. Nothing about Subaru repairs are cheap. Our punishment this time will be $1,300.00.
My Mustang GT needs a pair of new Flowmasters that will be much, much cheaper and sound way better than the piece of crap Subaru muffler that I have to purchase.
Subaru has definitely lost me as a customer. Some people swear by them, I swear at them.
Posted in Observations at 7:19 PM | Comments (2)
Hot Docs 2008
The 15th Canadian International Film Festival, Hot Docs, runs from April 17-27 this year. I’m hoping that I can attend a few more films than I did last year but my busy work schedule will probably limit the number of films I’ll be seeing.
Here is a list of 10 documentary films that I would like to see at Hot Docs this year:
Planet B-Boy — the globalization of hip-hop culture
Standard Operating Procedure — Errol Morris’ look at Abu Ghraib prison
At the Death House Door — the death penalty
Killer Poet — J.J. Jameson the churchgoer, poet and killer
The Black List — derogatory connotations of the term “black list”
Dance With A Serial Killer — France’s most notorious serial killer
Carny
Daddy Tran: A Life in 3-D — 3-D photography
Wesley Willis’s Joy Rides — artist/musician bio
The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia — photography
I don’t know which screenings I’ll be attending but let me know if you’ve picked any of these films. Maybe I’ll see you in the audience.
Posted in Hot Docs at 12:03 PM | Comments (1)
Happy Bloody St. Patrick’s Day
I played two games of hockey last night. I was terrible in my first game but my second was much better — 3 goals, 1 puck off the forehead and a win!
I have an Elastoplast “quick-healing” band-aid on my gash at the moment but I think I may have to visit the ER and get a few stitches.
Posted in Personal at 12:40 AM | Comments (9)
Writing things down and getting things done
The best way to get things done is to write things down.
It’s dangerously easy to miss deadlines or delivery dates if you don’t use some kind of to do list or task manager. I’ve looked at a number of Getting Things Done (GTD) software applications and found them all to be frustrating. They take too long to learn, set up and use. The best software for getting things done is no software at all.
I’ve gone back to a whiteboard and a Moleskine notebook to manage my to do lists, projects and deadlines. It’s fast, cheap, portable and efficient. It may not work for everyone but for my needs it is perfect.
Nick Cernis recently wrote about Writing Things Down (WTD): 13 Reasons To Switch Back To Paper Today. I couldn’t agree with him more which is why I’m writing about this in the first place.
Posted in OS X Software at 2:53 PM | Comments (0)
Monster Cables vs. Coat Hangers
If you’re a regular reader of this blog then you know that I’m not a huge fan of over-priced Monster cable. So how over-priced are Monster cables?
A member of the Audioholics Home Theater Forum conducted an interesting blindfolded listening test. A CD was listened to using Monster Cable and again with coat hanger wire. The joke is that none of the audiophiles participating in this test could tell the difference in the sound quality between the two cables used.
According to Google, the monster cables vs coat hangers test isn’t a new one but I find it amusing. Unfortunately Monster Cable Products, Inc. has a great marketing department and a lot of people believe the hype they sell.
Posted in Home Theatre at 10:29 AM | Comments (2)
The Love Guru trailer
The Love Guru (2008) is the movie that Mike Myers shot in and around Toronto last summer. I took a few pictures of the set at the Scarborough Bluffs and wrote about it here.
The official movie site for The Love Guru is one of the better movie sites that I’ve seen in a while. Generally, I dislike Flash websites but theloveguru.com is an outstanding example of how Flash can be used to enhance a website experience.
It’s hard to tell if this will be a hit from the trailer. A few of the gags have already been used in previous Myers films. I don’t see it doing a lot of business but it’s good to see Mike Myers doing something other than voiceover work.
Posted in Movies at 11:01 PM | Comments (0)
West Virginia outraged by casting director’s comments
The movie Shelter (2009) is filming in Pittsburgh where a casting call went out for inbred banjo people that look odd, freakish. It also called for people with physical deformities to play extras.
The good people of West Virginia are angry because the casting of these freaks is for a holler (small rural village) set in West Virginia. It didn’t help that the casting director, Donna Belajac, made these comments:
Some of these ‘holler’ people — because they are insular and clannish, and they don’t leave their area — there is literally inbreeding, and the people there often have a different kind of look. That’s what we’re trying to get.
The outrage over a casting call for deformed people went beyond West Virginia to Summerside, Prince Edward Island where Thomas Butler expressed his disgust:
There’s a special place in hell reserved for those who would mock other people’s physical deformities. Or (those who) promote the same.
The producers of the film fired Belajac and assured everyone that West Virginia wouldn’t be mentioned in the script. No word on whether deformed people would be cast as extras but it seems like a no brainer unless the production wants even more publicity.
Shelter is a supernatural thriller starring Juliane Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. It now takes place in Anytown, Anywhere, USA.
Posted in Movies at 9:32 AM | Comments (2)
I just bought a car
A few years ago my wife and I bought a 2000 Subaru Legacy GT. It’s been a great car until last month. It kept over-heating so we replaced the radiator, the thermostat, and various hoses. $1,000 later we thought we were in the clear.
The car ran smoothly for about a week and then it over-heated again. We took it back to the mechanic that made the repairs. He kept the vehicle for a week and ran a lot of tests (usually a bad sign that you’re going to get a really large bill in the future).
After a gazillion pressure tests the mechanic determined that the head gasket needed to be replaced. Cost: $2,000. Groan. Most people start looking for a new car when they received that kind of news but where can you get a decent car for $2,000 these days? And we just spent $1,000 on this dying Legacy. We caved and okayed the repairs.
The mecahnic also found a cracked timing belt, damaged water pump and another $700 in repairs that we didn’t count on. After hearing this news my stomach began to ache and I quickly developed a headache.
So in the month of February we spent around $4,000 on fixing our Subaru Legacy GT which to me, is like buying a new car. The kicker is that there still a lot of little things wrong with the car.
Most of the dashboard lights are out so we never know how much gas is in the tank or how fast we’re driving. The RPM gauge is lit up which is really helpful when you’re driving a vehicle with automatic transmisison. The engine light works and stays lit whenever you start the car — something about a vapour sensor that we can ignore. There are also 3 other LED lights that are burned out (heated seat indicator, side mirror defrost, side window defrost).
I used to think that Subaru made decent vehicles. Now I think that their vehicles are crap. I’ll never purchase another.
I’ve done fewer repairs to my 20-year-old Mustang GT Cobra (which is hard to believe) and it runs perfectly. After 20 years the dashboard lights always turn on and all of the LED indicators work perfectly. The original radiator lasted 15 years and I’ve only had to do minor repairs to the vehicle — headlight switch, power window switch, belts, etc.
I should have dumped the Subaru Legacy GT and put the $4,000 into my Mustang for some new performance parts.
In the next few years we’ll have to replace the Subaru and I’d love to hear what people recommend as their favourite vehicle.
Posted in Observations at 4:33 PM | Comments (5)
