Category: Blogging

"Should I run?" "Yes!"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

BlogTO used one of my flickr photos as a headline picture yesterday. Seeing that was a nice way to start off the day.

.:.

Nellie, T-Bone and I saw Superbad (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. Holy mother of god, it was funny. It was incredibly crude to the point that Jonah Hill’s character became kind of unlikable (although one of the best parts was hearing how many variations of “vagina” he could come up with) and there were too many scenes with the two cops, but those were small complaints in the face of pretty much nonstop laughter. Describing it as a cross between American Pie (minus the toilet humour) and The 40 Year Old Virgin is actually pretty accurate. If you can deal with ridiculously foul language, go see it. If you can’t, relax and then go see it.

.:.

We had dinner and a couple of pints at Smokeless Joe’s after. I love that place. I love sitting at the bar and listening to the blues and eating green pesto pasta and chatting with the friendly staff and drinking beer that I can’t get anywhere else. I’m glad it’s closer to us…now if only it weren’t smack in the middle of clubland.

.:.

I previously blogged about Walk Score, the site that tells you how pedestrian-friendly your home is. A friend recently brought it up again, and the scores coming out (our new condo, for example, scored only 80/100) led me to think they’d fixed their previous data issues (see the comments in my original post) so I gave it another whirl. Lo and behold, our condo scored a 95/100. I guess the data issues have been solved.

[tags]blogto, superbad, smokeless joe’s, walkscore[/tags]

pH = 7

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

A thoroughly uneventful day. Not particularly busy at work, home at a decent hour, nothing startling in the news (unless you’re a Democrat), exceedingly gray weather…pretty vanilla day, all in all. I went for a run this morning…the wrist felt fine, and I could have done more than 1.5 miles but I want to ease back into it. I’ll go again tomorrow and aim for 2. Got some info about our mortgage closing (which is a week from today), got the latest episode of Entourage, picked up my outdoor speakers and had some late (and unexpected) birthday cake. That’s about as harmless as a day can be, I guess.

.:.

I’ve picked up the pace with Zip lately. If we do decide to cancel our account I want to watch the best movies possible first. I’ve been using up my bonus points to get certain movies sent to me. Right now that The Road To Guantanamo, Notes On A Scandal and Junebug. They’ve also sent Kicking And Screaming. Next up: probably Full Nelson and Inside Man.

.:.

Geek note: if you read my blog the old-fashioned way (on a web browser) the links in the sidebar (consumption & MP3s) should be fixed now.

[tags]democrats, wiretaps, entourage, zip.ca, road to guantanamo, notes on a scandal, junebug, full nelson, inside man[/tags]

It was pretty funny when H-Simp punched N-Flan

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’m liking my new blog template. If you notice any bugs (beyond the broken links in the consumption/mp3 widgets in the sidebar; already noticed those ones) let me know.

.:.

The Simpsons Movie (imdb | rotten tomatoes): pretty good. Little dopey toward the end, but solid laughs throughout. Much more sophisticated visuals than I’m used to seeing in the show, and humour a little more in the pratfall/timing style of the early seasons than in the more recent absurdist style. Good escapism for sure.

.:.

Daily Dose of Imagery has (yet another) very cool shot of downtown Toronto, including our condo. The perspective is misleading; our building (on the far left) is actually dwarfed by the big bank towers).

.:.

The whole athlete nickname thing where they use their first initial and the first syllable of their last name (e.g., A-Rod, J-Kidd, T-Mac, etc.) has gone too far. It was already silly when it got to J-Dub, but now that it’s reached Man-Ram, it’s just torn the ass out of the whole thing.

[tags]wordpress templates, simpsons movie, daily dose of imagery, toronto, athlete nicknames, manny ramirez[/tags]

Comment spam: 1: Dan: 0.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’ve been forced to enable registration for comments. The comment spam today is overwhelming, it’s eluding Akismet, and it’s nasty. I’ll turn registration back off when I can.

[UPDATE] I turned off the registration requirement, but I’ve turned on moderation.

[tags]comment spam[/tags]

Is 36,000 BTUs enough to cook eggplant?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

It’s been a busy weekend. Yesterday we got up early, went to St. Lawrence Market to pick up some shrimp and scallops and fruit, ran a few errands, picked up some shirts we ordered from American Apparel, did some work (schoolwork, in my case) and went over to CBGB’s place for a barbeque. The barbeque fun didn’t stop there; we zipped around the corner to Home Depot and ordered a barbeque of our own: this one by Vermont Castings [pictured at right].

.:.

The party at CBGB’s (in belated honor of GB’s birthday) was a lot of fun…a packed front porch followed by a packed backyard patio, great food, cold beer, many laughs, and a slight overindulgence in the desserts. What’s better than that?

.:.

Today’s been great so far too: I slept in until 9:00 (the cats practically kicked me off the bed after that), got up, read the paper, went out to find some breakfast and came back raving about the perfect weather: it was warm but not hot, and breezy enough to keep the smog off. I collected Nellie and we headed off on a stroll to the Distillery District. We had a peek in a few galleries, stopped at the Mill Street Brew Pub for some brunch, got some amazing chocolate at Soma and wandered home along the Esplanade, popping up to Front Street so that we could see all the dogs at Woofstock. Now, sadly, it’s back to reality as Nellie has to work all day and I’m catching up on a bunch of stuff. It was a great way to spend a Sunday morning though…

.:.

My comment spam problem is getting worse and worse. Most of you never see it (unless you subscribe to my comment feed) because the comments are buried in old posts, and the vast majority of it gets caught, but when you get 1300/day a few are bound to slip past my spam filter. What does slip past is often very nasty too, so if you’re reading the comments and you see unpleasantness, I apoligize.

[tags]st. lawrence market, american apparel, home depot, vermont castings, distillery district, mill street brew pub, soma chocolate, woofstock, comment spam, akismet[/tags]

Stoopid WordPress

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Gar. I had a long post all written up but WordPress (or possibly my host?) decided to cack and it disappeared. I can’t be bothered to remember it all or write it all again, so here’s the summary version:

  • We had dinner last night at Fieramosca with CBGB. That was great.
  • I got my hair cut today and ate some gelato. That was great.
  • I realized today that I have a paper due next week, and I haven’t even started it. That sucked.
  • Darth Vader’s a jackass.

Blargh.

[tags]fieramosca, gelato, darth vader[/tags]

"Coupons…you want coupons, don't you?"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Today was day 1 of the mesh conference here in Toronto. I met up with Colin, cursed the caterers for only having bagels to eat, drank as much water as I could and found a seat before the proceedings got underway.

The first (and best) part of today’s schedule was TechCrunch‘s Mike Arrington. He’s a pretty frank guy, and when he lambasted Ted Murphy from PayPerPost — calling him “the most evil person in the room” — things got fun. He also spoke frankly about how silicone valley is in need of another meltdown, to get all the PR and money-grabbing types out and let the real revolutionaries take over again.

Tom Williams and Austin Hill were also good, giving their perspectives as two guys who got very rich very young, and have devoted their time to effecting social change. Hill talked about an interesting new distributed computing power saving tool; think SETI@home for saving electricity. Check it out at DarkGreenPC.org.

After a sad lunch (strike 2 against the caterers: only vegetarian options were ceasar salad and pasta salad) I saw a very funny panel with Rachel Sklar, Loren Feldman and Cynthia Brumfield about whether or not old media should be scared shitless of new media. The consensus: maybe a little. New media won’t kill old media, but it’ll scare it into reacting.

I also watched panels entitled “Digital Blinders – Are We an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep?” and “The Always-On Generation – What Do Youth Do with the Web?”; the former was more like a university lecture or radio show than panel discussion, while the latter was amusing for how old it made most of the participants feel. A sample snippet:

[panelist] Erica Sum: “How many people in here have been to YTMND?”

[I raise my hand, as do maybe 4 or 5 other people in a room of about 100. Erica then starts talking about how cool it is in a screwy kind of way.]

Confused audience member #1: “Umm, could you maybe describe what that is for people who don’t know?”

Confused audience member #2: “Yeah, like how it’s different than Facebook or MySpace?”

Erica [trying to stifle laughter]: “Oh, it’s not at all.”

You can’t fault the audience members for not knowing what YTMND is, or for thinking it has something to do with social networking, since it’d been the dominant theme of the day. It was just a funny exchange.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Note to self: bring a nutrigrain bar.

.:.

Obviously, if I’m at home writing this, I wasn’t able to attend the free screening of Severance that I won passes to earlier this week. I was feeling too wonky, and have too much to do tonight. As soon as I finish writing this I plan to do an hour or two of work while I watch the hockey game. Dagnabbit…I wanted to see that movie too.

.:.

Things I’ve learned in the last 36 hours: never wear a white dress shirt to the dentist (that pink shit they polish your teeth with sprays) and screens for balcony doors are outrageously expensive (we’ve been quoted >$400 each).

.:.

An instructional video: how to break up with advertisers.

[tags]mesh07, severance, dentist, balcony screen doors, bring the love back[/tags]

Paging languor

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

So much for finding a little downtime. Work has been teh nuttiness for the past couple of weeks, I have a paper due Tuesday that I haven’t even started yet and the condo to-do list grows faster than I can knock it down.

Today wasn’t so bad though; despite being at work for 11 hours I had lots of energy when I got home, and I think it’s because of the concert last night. Music is my meditation.

[tags]downtime[/tags]

Twit(ter)

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I just can’t get into Twitter. That’s not to say that I won’t cave some day, but I can’t imagine anyone being interested enough in my life to want a minute-by-minute update, nor can I imagine being that interested in anyone else’s.

I think it’s a way for people who consider themselves blog “pioneers” to create a new social stratum, now that every teenager, CEO and expectant mother has a blog.

[tags]twitter[/tags]