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.

Sigma SD 14

There are so many great looking digital SLR cameras hitting the shelves at the moment that if I were to actually be in the market for one (I'm trying to convince myself that I'm not, but I reaallly want one), I would have a hard time choosing. A couple of months ago I would have said that for sure, the new Canon 30D was the one for me, a little pricey but a sure winner, with fantastic features and Canon's record of superb workmanship, not to mention the great lens range available, which is of course of extremely high importance. However, in the last month or so we have witnessed the release of the new Nikon D80 and now Canon's 400D (Digital Rebel XTi). Both cameras feature in the slightly lower price bracket but do not scrimp on features or apparently ability, according to the review on the extremely comprehensive digital camera review site "dpreview". Both cameras are quite a step up from their predecessors in the same price bracket. They have ample megapixelage (10) -only differing in their use of sensors CCD (Nikon) and CMOS (Canon)-, large 2&1/2inch LCD screens for quality checking compositions, and they both take great quality shots. The Nikon looks to have a couple of extra features compared with the Canon, like in camera touch ups, but I would be unlikely to use this, since there have been a number of times that I have been surprised when a photo has come up on the computer well, that I had been sure was a doozy. The Nikon also carries a slightly higher price too.
So there I was wondering in which direction to go and then this week I read on gizmodo about a new camera coming very soon by Sigma of all companies that promises to do amazing new things with a revolutionary step forward in sensor technology. The best thing you can do is watch the video on their promotional website. Basically they've got this new sensor called the Foveon X3 direct image sensor, which is touted to be able to get 3 colours out of every pixel instead of the regular one per pixel of the other sensors out there. A pretty sweet innovation from a company I always thought of as the company that supplied cheaper lenses to people who couldn't afford the best, but still wanted to give photography a good go.
They all look so good and tempting with all those buttons, screens, lenses and potential, so good that in fact that I think I'll just have to do what I usually do in this case... buy nothing. ho hum.

This is for my sister

She'll know what it means. tee hee hee

I wonder if I could get this to work with my digital camera

Solar Style is selling a small range of portable solar chargers that promise to charge up a large number of your small electronic appliances while out of reach of civilisation, or just for those days sitting out in a park or at the beach when you stay too long for the length of your batteries full charge (for those conscientious pre-chargers out there). Another bonus of these chargers is that they come loaded with an on board battery which can be charged up by AC adapter or car charger before heading out, to cover those moments when the sun disappears behind a thunderous and unforgiving storm cloud or two or three. A guy wrote a report on treehugger saying that he had picked one up on ebay and was finding that it was working really well at keeping all his shit fired up. He also believed that a couple of the $50 models together would be enough to charge up your garden variety laptop, which would really be something for all those sun loving civilisation 3 players thesis writers out there. I think that I'll be adding a couple of these to my wish list anyway, if only to keep the innovation in this area growing.

If there's one thing for certain

The world will end one day. It's sad but it's true, and a bunch of guys from California calling themselves "albino black sheep" have put together a short flash animation video that shows us some of the many ways in which this could happen. This video is seriously funny, and so fast paced that you will probably have to watch it again to catch everything. Not a hardship, I assure you.

Check it out here

New Style

After about ten years of longish to long hair it was time for a change. Feels pretty damn good too, so I might be cruisin around like this for a little while now. Dunno about 10 years though...

Is Ethanol the new Petroleum

This is a well put together and pretty thorough presentation on the benefits of switching over to ethanol. I was very surprised by the fact that it only costs car manufacturers an extra US$30 to make a car dual fuel capable. Much cheaper than the extra production cost (about $3000) involved in the manufacture of hybrid engines, which while better than nothing as far as reducing fuel use is concerned, have not yet proven to be drastically more economical. A warning for those with small download limits, it's just over an hour long, so be warned. Well worth it though.

imovie's pretty fun

Just a quick note to mention that the new imovie HD is really quite a fun and easy to use program. I decided to fire it up last night and I uploaded a small number of my 10-50 sec clips from my digital camera (not a handy cam so low picture quality). Was only mucking around in the program for about an hour or so, and I found it to be straight forward even for an editing beginner. After said hour, I had linked together 5 clips on the timeline, extracted the audio so that I could keep only the sound in each track that I wanted, and I also chopped an audio file up after bringing it over from itunes so that my video could have a sound track. I haven't yet gotten onto the transition of the clips, so that they blend semi-professionally but I thought that for about an hours work, that wasn't too bad, with taking into account first learning some new terminology and what all the commands do (not that hard, cos they've really kept things simple). As soon as I've polished it up a bit more I'll see if I can hook it up for you to have a look and a laugh at. It's all fun though isn't it?

Venture Bros

I've been really getting into a show called Venture Brothers recently. It's a cartoon that features in the adult swim lineup on the Cartoon Network, and its frickin hilarious. The Venture Bros is a take off of Johnny Quest and the Hardy Boys, both of which I've never seen or read, however, there is definitely enough humour and violence in every episode to keep you interested...
The story is centred on the lives of two twin boys Hank and Dean Venture, completely innocent in nature, due to their being raised solely inside the Venture Industries compound. They do, however, seek a life of adventure, and every episode only narrowly escape death or at the very least dismemberment. Their father Dr Thaddeus Venture is basically the failure son of a genius and all around hero super scientist, the founder of Venture Industries. Dr Venture lives off the ideas of his father, and just never seems to be able to match up to him. Dr Venture's bodyguard Brock Samson is the hardest and coolest instigator of death that you will ever know. He is a secret agent with a licence to kill and he takes every opportunity to make sure that he uses it. He cares deeply for the boys, and will rain death on anyone who even thinks of harming them. Brock has utter disdain for firearms and does the majority of his killing with his bare hands or ever present bowie knife.
Can't really say anything more without ruining it, so just get your hands on a few episodes and you'll be hooked.

Caveman fun

It took a whole lotta work for that short bitta fun. A video to make you glad that we've entered the cyberspace age. he he

Great Article in the Australian today

This is a very powerful speech, designed to make people sit up and have a think about what the consequences of sitting around and being a kid for your whole life really are, for not just yourself, but the whole of your society. Well, that sounds a bit dire, and you probably won't want to read it now, but DO...

link

The best part or me was Costello's line about having babies (I've missed out due to living out of the country)- a boy for you, a girl for me, and one for Australia. The author Mark Steyn, says that Costello's call to the nation is more of a security concern than how much is spent on defence. Quite a statement really, if defence spending is really about protecting a way of life, then he's absolutely correct in my book.

Summer Break

It's been ages since I last contributed anything to this budding site. The main problem is that my work schedule is a bit stuffed at the moment while I'm on summer holidays from school. Every day stuck in a small room filled with other bored foreign teachers, tryin' to pass the time till the required time is up. I'll try to get onto it a bit more this week, and stick up a bit of something interesting. At least gotta make it a bit worthwhile to type in this address every now and again.