Touching the Void

You may or may not have noticed that I had the book, "Touching the Void" by Joe Simpson, in my currently reading section for a few months. The book didn't take me anywhere near even a month but I am just a bit slack in updating the template for such things. Well anyway, last night I sat down and watched the movie of the same name, which is created in a documentary style, and is narrated by the two hapless adventurers from the actual event back in 1985.
For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it is an amazing true story of survival in a situation so dire that all hope should have been long forgotten. A couple of young mountaineers try to tackle the previously "impossible" and write their names into the climbing world, only to have their adventure turn into disaster.
I never really had any aspirations of ever being a mountain climber before the book and movie, and after reading and watching the images on screen I certainly never will. That's not to say that it isn't a great story, it's just I enjoy my creature comforts too much and I can't see myself getting the kick out of it that these guys do. I just don't need the rush, which in so many cases ends up in the splat (bad humour I know).

and you thought that you were small and insignificant before?

These photos taken by the Hubble space telescope are really breathtaking and extremely thought provoking. A while ago I listened to a lecture series on the theory of life on other planets, which basically theorised that with the vast number of suns out there, with potential solar systems, it would be almost crazy and naive to believe that this is the only planet with life. The photos in this video put some of those words into perspective.

One thought I've come up with before is that, with God being so unfathomable and all, what's to say that he didn't create thousands of Edens with slight variations so that he could watch the whole thing play out. Maybe on one of the other planets, no-one was foolish enough to eat the fruit, or maybe it took 3 or 3000 generations before someone tried, who really knows??

One of the Coolest Cartoon Characters EVER!

When I'm not watching hilarious episodes of 'Venture Brothers' these days, I'm enjoying the great work of the animator Genndy Tartakovsky called 'Samurai Jack'. Genndy is best known for his creation of Dexter's Laboratory (not something I've ever seen more than a few minutes of), but also for an animated series of the Star Wars 'Clone Wars'. The animated 'Clone Wars' was created before George Lucas made the movie, and some of the ideas for the movie are reputed to have come from the cartoon, eg. General Grievous. I watched season 1 and 2 -20 episodes of about 3 minutes each- in a day last week. I wouldn't say fantastic, but I would say that it's interesting to see someone else's take on how the 'Clone Wars' story could've been done.
One thing that is fantastic though, is the story of Samurai Jack. Cartoon network details the story like this, "Trapped in the future by an evil shape-shifting wizard named Aku, ancient warrior Samurai Jack fights diligently in his quest to rid the world of Aku's curse while also searching for the time portal that will finally take him home". Not sold yet?? I would be either, but you've gotta believe me, this cartoon is bloody good. The artwork in the scenery and the cinematography is fantastic. Listen to that!! If I have to use the word cinematography in a description of a cartoon, something must be up. The cartoons each have very little dialogue, but it is not at all missed when you are taking in all the visual and aural effects.
I've only seen season 2 so far, so I'm looking forward to getting into some of seasons 1, 3 and 4 shortly. I should get myself as t-shirt or something, cos this Jack guy is damn cool. Do yourself a favour and watch one or three, you'll be impressed.

Top of the Wishlist

While I would really love to get my hands on one the new core duo 2 macbook pros (as if that isn't a mouthful), when I see deals running like this I get a crazy pang of jealousy that I'm not living in the States and unable to get full benefit out of the deals those guys get. That whole economy of scale thing really leaves Australia with the rough end of the stick, and as of yet, Japan is still unfamiliar with the whole idea of discounting something that is a little bit older. Even second hand stores in Japan charge non negotiable prices that are only a small fraction (5-10 percent in many cases) less than the original full market retail.
The current deal at the apple store on refurbished core duo macbook pros (notice the missing 2), with the same warranty as a new model off the shelf, leaves them at about the same price as a regular macbook. I know which one I'd rather have. Don't get me wrong, the macbook that we now have at home is great, but there's just not enough macbook to go around when you live with a computer nut who can quite happily sit in front of both the laptop and desktop at the same time and say, sorry honey, the computers are busy at the moment. I feel a birthday/Christmas present coming on.

Chinese Dining

There's something about the name of this restaurant in Hakodate, but I just can't work out what it is...

Bob the Biker

Miso Katsu Mistake!!

So last weekend was a long weekend, so my wife and I took the opportunity to get out of the city for a bit and went 300kms down the road to another smaller city called Hakodate. We actually stayed about 40kms north of it or so in a nicely maintained free campsite on the side of a beautiful lake called Onuma. Well actually, for the first couple of days we wouldn't have known that the lake existed really for the terrible storms we were having. Hokkaido was just experiencing the tail end of a typhoon, which had just passed the rest of Japan that week. Did a little bit of rain (read about 40 odd hours straight) and a few days of strong wind stop us from going out camping, not if you've ever met my wife when she's got in her head that she wants to do something.
Anyway, it all turned out pretty fun, cos we set up the back of our station wagon car as a big cushy bed and flipped open the laptop to watch movies and a few episodes of Samurai Jack (cartoon that I'm just getting into and really enjoying). You may say that that is no different to what we could've done at home, but that doesn't take into account the uniqueness factor of sleeping under a metal roof with the rain pounding down. I had one of the best sleeps in a long time.
To make a long story short, and get to the good bit, the next night we were strolling around Hakodate under umbrellas when we came upon a 'Hokkaido famous' burger and pizza joint called 'Lucky Pierrot'. It sounded pretty good so we walked in to order. The styling looked like something a little out of the movie Grease, like an old American diner that I've only seen in movies. I glanced quickly at the menu and ordered the miso katsu burger, which was a bit of a strange choice for a burger shop, but if you've ever tried a good piece of tonkatsu (like schnitzel, but juicier and is crumbed differently) you'd understand why. Well I bit into said burger, and was immediately surprised by the slightly odd taste and colour of the meat. The meat colour was a dark grey, but not the usual shade of beef or anything that I'd ever seen. Then my wife mentions that on the menu they also sell pieces of black chicken (whatever that is), so I figure that the store must have some sort of marinade and this changes the colour of the meat and gives it a strange taste, also a chicken katsu is not at all unusual. At my comments about the burger my wife takes a bite, and the puzzled look on her face shows that she remembers the taste and has had some of this meat before. Not too long after that when my burger was all eaten, she looks down at the menu again, looks up at me with a big grin and asks 'so how did you like your first WHALE burger!?!'
Bugger!

Great Site for Some Quality Time Wasting at Work

I would probably be better off time wise if I had never found this site, but it's just too good for those days when I'm stuck at my desk between classes, but simply too buggered to do anything productive.
Basically the site "tvlinks", streams a huge number of TV shows live onto your screen, so that you can watch them without needing to physically download the file onto your machine (as far as anything computerwise is physical). The list of shows available is great, Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, South Park, American Dad (don't ask me), and two Japanese Anime Cartoon series, Naruto and Rurouni Kenshin. Seasons and seasons of shows are available, so have fun...

**UPDATE** site has been moved here. It's also enormous now, so, so many shows, so many wasted hours await...

**UPDATE 2** site has gone again, and can now be found here. Still expanding!

Haircut slideshow up and running!!

With the little bits and pieces of time that I've been able to scrape together I've put together this short slideshow for a bit of a laugh. I think it shows you the fun we had together on a relaxing Saturday afternoon.