Empty Headed?

Wow. Not updating much lately. Am I just empty-headed? Actually, work’s been busy lately. This week, my boss is in Ottawa until probably Wednesday. Does this make James happy, since he is the only other person in the office? Not really. I’m much too easily distracted, and actually feel guilty for being unproductive at work. In happier news, Brooke has started a new job as a fact checker for Canadian Business magazine. Not full time yet, but she’s entered the world of journalism. Way to go, Brookes!

We spent Saturday night at the “Taste of the Danforth” foodfest here in Toronto. Danforth is a mecca of (mostly) Greek restaurants, and you can bet that I was stuffing my face with souvlaki and baklava with the best of them. I love Toronto. Not only can a festival of mostly Greek culture draw over a million people over three days, the crowd is made up of all races and nationalities, showing that multiculturalism actually works.

Long Weekend

This past weekend was a long weekend here in Canada, and so no updates. I saw the Blue Jays beat Texas on Friday, then went to see a band. Last night, I saw the IMAX film about Michael Jordan. It was fun, but clocked in at about 45 minutes long. Not much for $8. Picked up Eric Meyer’s excellent book, Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, which I’m reading for work and for myself. Also picked up some other books, including Survivor, by Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, and Volume 1 of the journals of Thomas Merton. I also picked up Triple Play 2001, for my Playstation, which is a fabulous game. It will have to tide me over now that the release of Playstation 2 has been delayed until practically Christmas, at least in Europe. Amazingly, in the spending orgy that was this weekend, I didn’t buy any new music. Unbelievable.

I just downloaded Preview Release 2 of Netscape 6. A little bit faster than PR1 on my Mac, but still feels bloated. My main interest is whether it will be as standards compliant as IE 5 for the Mac. It’s definitely better than the nightmare known as Netscape 4. Has anyone else had any experience with it?

Blood Simple

Went to see Blood Simple (1984) last night with some friends. I’d seen it on video about 4-5 years ago, but last night was the first time I’d seen it in a theatre. It’s still an amazing piece of work, especially for a debut. I’m unashamedly a Coen brothers fan, though. I’ve been hooked since I first saw Raising Arizona (1987) more than ten years ago. It’s the best work I’ve seen by Nicolas Cage and John Goodman (although I never saw Leaving Las Vegas (1995)). The exciting part about Blood Simple is that it was re-released theatrically after they’d done a whole bunch of digital restoration for the upcoming DVD release. That should be a good one. By the way*, not sure about in the US, but Withnail and I (1987) has been released on DVD here in Canada, although it has nothing interesting in the way of supplements. I know that Criterion has/had a laserdisc, with lots of stuff, and they’ve been releasing a lot of their laserdiscs on the DVD format. Should I wait? Or just go ahead? I won’t have my DVD player (Playstation 2!!) until at least the end of October, so I guess I should just wait.

*See my entry for 7/11/00

Permalinks

I’ve been trying to add permalinks, but it keeps screwing up the formatting of the page, with weird line breaks and indenting all over the place. Anyone know what’s happening? I’ll keep trying….

One Month Down…

First month’s posts are now tucked into the archive. If you’ve been entertained, and are now reading me semi-regularly, or even better, linking to me, please drop me a line and let me know…