I got around to seeing the new Karate Kid movie. I’m starting to get scared of 80’s franchise films – there’s only so much you can re-write my childhood before I start to get annoyed with your changes. In the new Karate Kid the kid learns Kung-fu. There’s no Mister Miagi, no Ralph Macchio, no [...]

[Read more →]

Another quick read I had a chance to scarf down on a train ride to Quebec city. “Rainbow Mars” is Larry Niven’s very clever take on why 19th century observations of the cities and canals on Mars didn’t hold up under later scrutiny – in his version of events a canal-digging civilization ( composed of [...]

[Read more →]

Over my recent travels I had some time to read – it’s so great to be a passenger rather than a driver. On the trip to and from Toronto I managed to breeze my way through two of famous food TV host Anthony Bourdain’s latest books, with mixed reviews.

In “The Nasty Bits”, he’s put together [...]

[Read more →]

I’m really serious about trying to absorb some more French culture. I was embarrassed on Parliament Hill when an American asked me who the French Canada Day festivities host was – I really had no idea. I think a French celebrity could live next door to me and I’d never be the wiser.
Comics
Centerpointe Library has [...]

[Read more →]

Whenever I need to make a tweak to an image without Photoshop I always grit my teeth and bear my way through The Gimp* or an evaluation version of Paintshop Pro. But not anymore – I just discovered Pixlr and I’m really impressed!
Pixlr is free, has a UI suspiciously similar to Photoshop (I’m waiting for [...]

[Read more →]

When I was a kid I had an album (on vinyl!) called ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ featuring children’s poems read by the author Shel Silverstein. It was brilliant. Like fairy tales but twisted, sometimes darkly, which was a polar opposite to the super sanitized readers in my Catholic school library. I can still hear Shel’s [...]

[Read more →]

Natasha and I were already Roller Derby fans to begin with, so the movie “Whip It” was an easy sell. We haven’t been watching a lot of movies this summer, but with the crazy heat last week we found an excuse to hide out in the basement and get caught up on our movie pile.

Ellen [...]

[Read more →]

I took Natasha out for her birthday dinner last night to a place she’d been hearing about, Ottawa’s “New Restaurant of the Year”. Zen Kitchen on Somerset was pretty amazing. It was hands down the best vegan food I’ve ever had (which is not to say they had a lot of competition, but it was [...]

[Read more →]

So a bunch of people remarked that the G.I. Joe movie didn’t seem like the kind of thing I’d normally watch, and it they were probably right. I don’t want to give everyone the wrong impression though! While I object to the glorification of violence, I think it can be applied in really powerful ways [...]

[Read more →]

The Over-The-Air HD TV signal reception in the basement of our new place is pretty weak, but Natasha likes watching “The Amazing Race” on Sundays. I thought I’d surprise her with a proper antenna, the $39 “ANT1400 Flat Antenna” from RCA. It looks cool, can be hung on a wall or laid flat on a [...]

[Read more →]