Going where many, many men have gone before

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Two more sleeps, as my wife would say.

.:.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t know how I booked travel before the internet. Actually, I suppose I didn’t really; by the time I started flying anywhere or paying for a hotel the internet was in full bloom. I think the last time I spoke (voluntarily) to a travel agent was in 1997, right after I moved here and needed to book a flight home for my brother’s wedding.

Now, with web 2.0 / social software / whatever geeky term you want to use, it’s gotten even better. TripAdvisor helped us pick hotels in Lake Louise (Moraine Lake, actually) and Jasper that we never would have heard of, though they were both ranked #1 and were far cheaper than the Fairmont options. We did book a stay at the Banff Springs, though; I dare say we’ll need some extravagance at the end of the trip. Flickr gave us an advance taste of places like Emerald Lake and Lake O’Hara, and Chowhound pointed us to to some interesting restaurants that we’d have never considered otherwise.

.:.

By the way, the title is a line from Almost Famous that has nothing whatsoever to do with travel research.

[tags]banff, lake louise, jasper, tripadvisor, flickr, chowhound, fairmont, emerald lake, lake o’hara[/tags]

Well hello there, Google Reader

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Colin told me about the new & improved Google news reader last night. I tried it out and after five minutes I was in lurve. I grabbed my OPML file and, one quick import later, I have a new home. I didn’t like the first incarnation of the Google reader, and kept going back to the FeedDemon/NewsGator combo. Recently, I had to ditch FeedDemon because of sync problems I couldn’t resolve, though I kept using NewsGator. However, NewsGator’s web reader is clunky and Google reader actually feels as fluid as a desktop app, so I’m sold.

For now.

.:.

It’s time to catch up on the random MP3s I’ve been throwing onto my Nomad in the last few months. Here’s today’s lineup:

  • be your own pet . “thresher’s flail”
  • be your own pet . “we will vacation, you can be my parasol”
  • belafea . “tara”
  • bob dylan . “someday baby”
  • bob dylan . “the levee’s gonna break”
  • bob dylan . “thunder on the mountain”
  • bonnie prince billy . “the seedling”
  • califone . “the orchids”
  • cold war kids . “hang me out to dry”
  • cold war kids . “hospital beds”
  • cold war kids . “saint john”
  • darker my love . “what’s a man’s paris”
  • dears . “ticket to immortality”
  • editors . “munich”
  • jennifer o’connor . “exeter”
  • jennifer o’connor . “exeter, rhode island”
  • jesu . “dead eyes”
  • jesu . “silver”
  • john frusciante . “communique”
  • john frusciante . “sphere”
  • john frusciante . “walls”
  • johnny cash . “god’s gonna cut you down”
  • ladyhawk . “long ’til the morning”
  • ladyhawk . “sad eyes, blue eyes”
  • ladyhawk . “the dugout”
  • ladyhawk . “war”
  • long winters . “ultimatum”
  • mendoza line . “catch a collapsing star”
  • mike doughty . “i hear the bells”
  • mike doughty . “tremendous brunettes”
  • mischa . “cubicle”
  • mission of burma . “2wice”
  • murder by death . “boy decide”
  • my latest novel . “sister sneaker sister soul”
  • ox . “1913”
  • polyphonic spree . “lithium”
  • primal scream . “country girl”
  • primal scream . “dolls”
  • primal scream . “the 99th floor”
  • richard buckner . “town”
  • sissy . “so long”
  • spangle call lilli line . “b”
  • spangle call lilli line . “piano”
  • spoon . “idiot driver”
  • spoon . “mountain to sound”
  • sunset rubdown . “stadiums and shrines ii”
  • swan lake . “all fires”
  • yo la tengo . “pass the hatchet”
  • yo la tengo . “the room got heavy”
  • zero 7 . “this fine social scene”

[tags]google reader, newsgator, newsgator[/tags]

IEdsel

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

OK, I had to remove the Google Map from the sidebar ’cause Internet Explorer is retarded.

.:.

My poor mother. She’ll have to keep up with both my brother and I as we traipse through Turkey and the Rockies respectively. And on dialup, no less…

[tags]internet explorer sucks, rockies, turkey[/tags]

Once again, an Onion headline becomes reality

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Of all the reprehensible things the Bush administration has done, this is one of the most terrifying: in an article titled Forget Nuremberg: How Bush’s new torture bill eviscerates the promise of Nuremberg, Slate explains how the President has granted himself the authority to “interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions.”

The court system is now emasculated regarding the issue of torture. The executive branch has subverted the judicial branch, and has the legislative branch by the throat. The checks and balances set out by the forefathers Republicans claim to hold so dear are being chipped away, bit by bit.

I fear America is sliding into a period which, not too many years hence, they’ll view as one of the darkest in their history.

.:.

On a lighter note, and in preparation for our trip, I’ve added a little Google Map to the sidebar. It’ll show you where we are, so long as I can get enough signal to update our location on the blackberry.

[tags]bush, torture, nuremberg, geneva conventions, google maps[/tags]

Oil, fat and hyacinth

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At lunch today I finished watching another Werner Herzog documentary: Lessons Of Darkness (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Essentially 50 minutes of aerial film from Kuwait, taken just after the first gulf war, set to a Wagner score or to Herzog himself reading passages from Revelations, it’s enough to boggle the mind and drop the jaw. Fountains of fire spewing from sand, rivers and lakes of oil stretching for miles, racks of crude torture paraphenalia, burned & rusted skeletons of old vehicles, blackened men trying desperately to regain control over the exploding landscape…it’s just incredible stuff.

Herzog’s a freaking genius.

.:.

It’s natural that a conservative government would cut social programs. That’s what they do; it’s the basis for conservative politics: you lessen the role (and spending) of government, thereby reducing the short-term tax burden on the public. So it comes as no surprise that the Tory government is cutting $1 billion from human rights lawyers, students, museum-goers, etc.

What does surprise me is that they cut the programs on the same day they announced a $13 billion surplus.

While I agree with their decision to use the surplus to pay down the debt, couldn’t they have paid down $12 billion and left the social programs intact? It would’ve been a good PR move, certainly, and it would have been a non-dickish thing to do.

Weighing in with their (predictably opposing) viewpoints: the Toronto Star and National Post.

.:.

While piddling about on my computer tonight I put ye olde Windows Media Player on random. These were the first ten songs served up. Apparently my PC likes the instrumental post-rock; I didn’t hear a single word for about 22 minutes starting at song #6…

  • radiohead . “backdrifts”
  • blink 182 . “i miss you”
  • hank williams iii . “atlantic city”
  • flogging molly . “light of a fading star”
  • bjork . “army of me”
  • mono . “the flames beyond the cold mountain”
  • mogwai . “you don’t know jesus”
  • explosions in the sky . “first breath after coma”
  • constantines . “hyacinth”
  • ani difranco . “willing to fight”

I should have kept writing them down. It just played The Cooper Temple Clause, Sleater-Kinney and Iggy Pop all in a row.

[tags]werner herzog, lessons of darkness, conservative spending cuts, budget surplus, random music[/tags]

You snooze, you lose; well I have snost and lost.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

You know, it’s all fun and games ’til someone…umm…ooh. Yikes.

.:.

Sports Illustrated thinks the Canadiens might be a dark horse this year. I hope so, but their 0-4 preseason record isn’t a great sign.

Ooh…but they’re leading the Senators 4-2 in the 3rd.

.:.

We watched episode one of the fourth season of The Wire, and I’m hooked already. Sooooooo hooked. I love that show.

.:.

By the way, that line up there in the subject is from “I Hear The Bells” by Mike Doughty, known to my wife as the song playing at the alternaprom in the last season of Veronica Mars. I just love the lyric.
[tags]sports illustrated, canadiens, senators, the wire[/tags]

My body dislikes me…

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

…when I run for the first time in two weeks. The film festival and courses away from home (especially when the gym is off limits all six days) don’t allow much time for exercise, and there’s an abundance of rich desserts, ice cream bars and brownie-shaped objects at the training centre, so…yeah. All that adds up to about five pounds, so I’ve undone all the good (which equalled precisely that amount) I’d done in the weeks prior.

[tags]a waist is a terrible thing to mind[/tags]

Jesus is magic and the root of all evil

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I watched two very different things this weekend. The most recent was Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which I was a little disappointed by. Sarah Silverman is obviously very talented and funny and (at times) hot, but there were precious few times that I laughed. Some bits were so profane that she managed to get that slightly uneasy chuckle out of me, but that was about it. The best part of the DVD was the five-minute clip of her in The Aristocrats; everything else just seemed a little too contrived in its fearlessness.

.:.

The other film I watched was a documentary on CBC Newsworld’s new series The Big Picture, where Avi Lewis watches a documentary with a bunch of people and then they all discuss it. Sounds boring, I know, but the topic this past week was Richard Dawkins’ documentary The Root Of All Evil: The God Delusion. A lot of the crowd — made up of regular folks but also “experts” like ministers, imams, professors, etc. — didn’t like the way Dawkins went about making his point, but most of the people either agreed in the end or made arguments so illogical that one could barely argue with them. One example from a minister and politician: “I think God is love; would you deny that love exists?” Well, I could declare that god is buttered popcorn; that doesn’t really prove much. But the real low point of the evening was surely Charles McVety, president of the Canada Christian College. Even the clergy were turning on him by the end. The whole thing plays again this evening on Newsworld if you’re interested, or you can view the debate online and witness the migrainish hilarity firsthand.

This coming Wednesday the topic is a Sir David Attenborough documentary about global warming. Should be a good one.

.:.

Actually, I guess I watched a third thing this weekend: Jericho, the new CBS show about a small Colorado town that’s plunged into darkness, fear and uncertainty when a mushroom cloud appears on the horizon, roundabouts where Denver should be. By the end of the first episode they also learn that [spoiler alert] a bomb’s gone off in Atlanta, and that a small child can make a remarkably neat trach tube from a handful of pens and a rubber band in a matter of seconds. Anyway, it’s an interesting enough premise, but the show was prone to hammy acting, predictable scenarios (prodigal sons, lost loves, overturned prison buses, etc.) and speech-making that just bogged it down. I’ll probably give it another week or two, but it’s on a short leash.

[tags]sarah silverman, jesus is magic, cbc newsworld, the big picture, richard dawkins, religion, root of all evil, god delusion, charles mcvety, david attenborough, global warming, jericho[/tags]