Firefox Add-on ScribeFire – Screaming Buskids

I’ve installed a Firefox add-on that lets you blog from anywhere without having to go through a tedious login, so maybe I’ll start updating again!

But I doubt I’ll keep the old format, it was getting to be a hassle to cut an paste every time. I think I’ll just play it by ear for the most part.

Today’s mini review:

Screaming kids on the bus!

Verdict – 0/10 – They both look like chubby little boys, but one is a chubby little girl (or a boy named Melissa)! Who can control them? Certainly not their father.

A Movie We Made for School

Alright let’s get this out of the way

In the interest of people knowing what “I’m up to” here’s a short film I made for a class at SFU Surrey.

There’s a few things I’m not happy with, but then there’s some bits that I like. I really think the first 2 minutes is the most cohesive. I don’t want to add any narcissism to this or belittle any other of my group members input (we all worked really hard, and we couldn’t have made this otherwise), but the first two minutes I’ll say are more me than any other part of the movie. I wrote the shot list, dialogue, and then shot and edited the first two minutes, so if you’re looking for the best example of my work that’s where to look around in. Oh, except one cut that Andrew pointed out to me, which is where I’m laying on the floor and it sort of dwells on the shot for a period of time. I would have made that a little more succinct.

A few things I’m not all that happy with, including the whole thing (you just get so sick of your idea after 5 weeks, you know?) are the ending, which is pretty silly and overdone, and a few of the other scenes where it’s not clear exactly what happens. Fun Fact!: It’s a shoe that hits my face in the one scene.

At the showing people laughed in the right places, and even said “Ooh…” when I fell on the stairs. I think I blew part of our mark when the prof asked “So, did you end up using any of the techniques you learned from your study of a director?” and I said “Not consciously.” But we did Ang Lee. Our movie didn’t have any sweeping mountain ranges with flying swordsmen, bamboo thickets, gay cowboys, or Hulks. I don’t usually think of Ang Lee movies in terms of cinematography, it sort of fades into the background behind compelling plots and the beauty of the landscape he chooses to shoot in.

We, on the other hand, had Burnaby.

CONCEPT: 4/5 – The idea was sort of noble, rather than do something overly violent or depressing (as most student films seem to turn out) we tried to do something with a more light hearted message. Probably because the two example movies we were shown have to do with strangling women.

INNOVATION: 3/5 – Not a whole lot new here. Imagination shown in black and while, blinking eye to transition, repetition, deus ex machina, the works. We forgot to include the scene that explained that Jamie was looking for me because I didn’t come to her party. I wonder if that came through at all.

SATISFACTION: 2/5 – Although it was one of the better films, I think with more time and more retakes, paying more attention to lighting, and framing shots more interestingly, we could have made a better movie.

EXECUTION: 3/5 – Total editing time was around 30 hours for everyone combined, which was partly because everyone was learning to use the program. We almost lost the entire thing twice, and had other technical issues. Turned out alright though.

FUN FACTOR: 2/5 – At the beginning of the project, 4, at the end 0. So an average of 2 will suffice.
OVERALL: 5/10 – If this were a grade, I would give us 75%, but since this is a 10 point scale where 50% isn’t a fail, I’m giving us a 5 overall. Some good element, but ultimately too much work for too little payoff. The next one will be better, if we ever do one.

Food Poisoning (confirmed)

The sweat of bad meats and dreams of fictional children’s movies: an illness in three acts

It might have been the pizza pockets, or the wasabi peas, or the apple, or the 5 beers, or the two shots of sambuca, or the eggs on english muffins, or the taco and mexican platter, or the microwave popcorn, or the rootbeer, or the sourdough with cheese whiz, or the doritos and banana (sorry Leah), or the johnny cakes, or the yucatan hash (was it the hash?), or the bagel with cream cheese, or the rest of the wasabi peas, or the second rootbeer,

BUT somewhere over the weekend I ingested something that wanted to reproduce rapidly in my gut. And it weren’t rabbits!

Did you know there’s no such thing as a 24 hour flu? If you have a flu that lasts for around 24 hours it’s a bacterial infection, not influenza. A bit of a misnomer.

Being rid-to-bed and constantly thirsty, I was out of commision for about 26 hours or so. Pretty much from the moment I arived home from Victoria until midnight the following day when I woke up and realized I’d sweat it out. Waking up and realizing you’ve sweat something out is a mixed blessing. On one hand it’s out, on the other it’s sweat. It nice to not be losing water our every possible orifice, however.

There was a small bonus to being ill, but if I were a less easily amused person I doubt I would count it as positive. I had some awesome hallucinations! I can’t remember them all, but true to form they involved great internal struggle that was completely fruitless. At one point 3 ideas (who knows what) were all trying to be processed at once inside my head, and all I knew is that I couldn’t let any one of them ‘win’.

Another point, more memorable because it was near the end, I watch three completely invented children’s animated movies (one hand drawn, the others computer animated). One was an epic, like Lord of the Rings, I think it was the hand drawn one, and it was my favourite. I was drawn in by the massive scope, the heartfelt characters, and the obviously large budget. After watching all three, I played a video game that Electronic Arts had produced on my favourite of the three. I remember looking at the map screen and thinking “Typical. They took the most impressive quality, the massive scope and expansive world and reduced it to a single screen with animated glowing houses for the towns, and little green goblins for nondescript bad guys.” To travel from point to point you just pressed a direction and your characters moved along a dotted line to the next town. So, I phoned Moss to complain about this feature, but then we got sidetracked talking about something else.

CONCEPT: 0/5 – Not… What? Who… Why does this exist? These microbes don’t make sense. If they succeed, the host dies, and so do they. If they do not succeed, the host wins, and they die.

INNOVATION: 1/5 – Good job at making me miss class, I haven’t been sick in a while.

SATISFACTION: 1/5 – I can’t justify missing out on a day and a half of my life, even if it was relaxing in a strange way.

EXECUTION: 2/5 – To my benefit, those little fuckers didn’t even keep me down for over 26 hours.

FUN FACTOR: 0/5 – Upset bummy.

OVERALL: 1/10 – Go to hell, gastro!

Today’s Hairdresser

Chatty woman from east Africa

I went to get my hair cut. I went to the same place I go when I need groceries, to go to the dentist, see a doctor, or buy a video game: Brentwood Town Center (Mall).

The hairdresser didn’t seem to hear me when I asked “can I get in for a cut this afternoon?” She looked vacantly past my shoulder, and then turned around to talk to a man behind her, who was busy cutting hair. She turned slowly back around, and said “I can take you.” We walked to the sinks so she could wash my hair (twice) that I had not one hour before, washed (twice). She was a short, middle aged woman with dark skin, and an accent I mistook for East Indian.

“Did you have a good New Years? I like to dance,” she answered. “R&B, Salsa, Dance, top 40, and anything Indian!” she laughed. Her daughter is going to UBC next year, and her other daughter wants to go to UVic for Law when she finishes highschool. The UVic daughter works at the Metrotown SilverCity, got a job without an interview because she’s so confident. “I think that makes things easier, being confident, and able to talk. When you do not talk to others easily, you keep things inside, you have a hard time doing even simple things.”  Hey, I thought this was her life story, not mine.

She’s got family in Switzerland, and a handful of other places, and she’s visited them all.”It’s important to travel. I’ve only been in Canada four years. I came to Calgary, Toronto, New York, but I decided I wanted to live in Vancouver.”

“We’ll make you handsome, Joshua,” she assures me. I over tip because I don’t have correct change.

CONCEPT: 3/5 – I’m disappointed when hairdressers aren’t chatty. It’s like a plumber who’s not overweight.

INNOVATION: 4/5 – She went into some areas I’ve never heard someone go into so freely. “I divorce my husband recently. He did not work, you know. They say; idle mind is a jealous mind?”

SATISFACTION: 3/5 – Not a bad cut. Not super great, or anything, and she combed it weird right before I left.

EXECUTION: 3/5 – Efficient and personable. “I make lots of friends.”

FUN FACTOR: 3/5 – Because I’m pretty tall, it’s hard to hang my head in those little sinks. My neck started to hurt. But other than that, probably the funnest part of my day. Well, except reading Pug Therapy, which Ally gave me for Christmas.

OVERALL: 7/10 – A little more than I’m used to paying for a haircut, and I don’t feel that the quality was such to warrant the extra cost, but considering I get my hair cut like 2-3 times a year, I guess I can’t complain. Priya was a nice hairdresser.

Running Through the Rain to the Ferry

Wind storm also

An entirely different experience than taking the ferry is running through the rain to the ferry. This may happen because you’re at a friend’s house before Christmas, and he lives in Campbell River, and you live on Quadra, and you were Christmas shopping and decided to go to his place for drinks and to listen to music. Or maybe for some other reason, I’m not a soothsayer.

So it comes to be 9:30, and if you don’t leave soon you’re not going to be able to catch the 10:30 home, so of course you procrastinate for at least 20 minutes because you’ve been drinking Scotch and Rye and listening to Tyler Fedchuk mixes and going over the year in music. You eventually decide to leave so that it’s easier to get things done tomorrow, even though it’s raining pretty hard out, and there’s a terrible wind storm going on and you’re not even sure if the ferry’s running anyway. On the way out you leave the present you bought Mom in your friend’s entryway.

And you’re doing it. You’re jogging to the ferry in the rain in a wind storm. Thank God it’s mostly down hill, and the Scotch has made you feel warm and unable to tell when you should stop jogging. So you get there in record time, about 10 minutes, and you have to sit and wait for the ferry for another 10 minutes in the cold wet waiting area. But at least the ferry is running, and your brother picks you up at the other side and drives you home. Good thing he got his license! Maybe he can pick you up tomorrow from the pub as well…

CONCEPT: 1/5 – Having to run through the wind and rain in a big jacket aren’t high on anyone’s list of things to do before they die.

INNOVATION: 1/5 – It’s common knowledge that running increases speed.

SATISFACTION: 2/5 – Getting there on time is nice, but being too early just makes you think of all the time you could have spent still listening to a mash up.

EXECUTION: 4/5 – Well, you made it with time to spare at least.

FUN FACTOR: 1/5 – Suck factor: 4/5

OVERALL: 4/10 – Not all that bad, really.

BC Ferries

Part of living in BC

In my life, I’ve spent over  800 hours on the ferry. That’s an entire month, just floating around on a big boat. This is calculated from taking a 15-20 minute ride two ways on every school day for four and a half years, traveling to visit family in Vancouver, going to church, going to movies, going shopping, and more recently traveling to Victoria to visit my girlfriend.

All of these activities involved taking the ferry. I grew up on Quadra island, off the coast of Vancouver island, off the coast of the mainland, BC.  The ferry to Vancouver island takes about an hour and a half, and they are much bigger than the one that goes to Quadra, which is sort of cute by comparrison. All the ferries have names like “Queen of Vancouver” or “Queen of Prince Rupert”. You can see a cool size comparison and fleet info here. At one point or another I’ve probably been on most of those boats.

There’s a lot of good memories of the ferry. Friendships are formed, whales are seen, storms are endured, and ferry food is also endured. I even knew someone who was born on the ferry. The company has had it’s share of problems. Heavy subsidization by the government and crashes (scroll down for a neat picture), some of the ships were built in the 60’s and are still in service. Things are starting to shape up though. It seems like someone who actually knows what they’re doing is now in charge, and is modernizing both the ferries themselves and the terminals, both of which were ailing in recent years.

Now you can get White Spot at the cafeteria, there’s more, much nicer seating, and less of the old look which was painted steel and visible grey insulation in the ceiling (this is still the case on the Quadra ferry though, if you touch it it falls away in chunks). Here’s to many more years riding BC Ferries.

CONCEPT: 4/5 – The ships are a necessary part of life. It’s sometimes frustrating to rely on them so heavily, and the seas are fickle. But I’m glad they’re there to allow for our way of life.

INNOVATION: 3/5 – The ships are getting a lot better. They even accept Debit at the ferry terminal now, and you have buy your tickets from a kiosk like at the movies. However, this doesn’t yet make up for years of not accepting Debit, not having a kitchen equipped to meet demand, and poorly thought out seating areas.

SATISFACTION: 2/5 – Getting better, but still not there yet. Anyone standing and waiting to walk off the ferry will tell you some thing’s not quite right about the experience.

EXECUTION: 4/5 – They sure carry you to an island! Pretty much all you can really expect.

FUN FACTOR: 3/5 – The ferry can be fun, if you make it fun. There’s an arcade, but I rarely play. If they just lowered the price of every game to $0.25, I think they’d make more money on average than charging $0.50 to $1.

OVERALL: 6/10 – Long, but necessary, bordering on pleasant.

Weekend Warzone #8 – Rashomon, Being Paralyzed by Choice, Kitties

Rashomon

In the theme of reviewing a Kurosawa film on the weekend comes this weeks chapter, Rashomon. Rashomon is the story of a murder that takes place in a forest glen told from the perspective of four people; a bandit, a dead man, the dead man’s wife, and an outside observer, a man hiding in the trees. The movie explores the themes or justice, morality, good and evil.

Some of you will be happy to know the movie only runs 88 minutes, as opposed to Seven Samurai which actually takes several years to complete.

I found the film very interesting. It’s got the theme that’s done to death in every single police/crime drama on television; that of multiple veiwpoints of the same crime. In those shows, however, there’s a conclusion. A point where the viewer is succored by the director, and everyone can cry “I knew it!” Rashomon offers nothing clean cut. Like the line between Good and Evil, the truth and lies of each story become blurred so that no retelling can be the entire truth, but none are entirely untrue.

CONCEPT: 4/5 – The concept is solid, and allows for a lot of probing of deeply rooted human nature.

INNOVATION: 5/5 – This was pretty original for it’s time, I’m sure. Too bad CSI decided to make an entire show about the concept alone.

SATISFACTION: 3/5 -Leaves the audience with an odd feeling of discontent, because we never find out what really happened. But as a film, it’s very satisfying.

EXECUTION: 4/5 – The DVD transfer I watched had bad sound, which shouldn’t be an issue in a movie with subtitles, right? Well, it would have been nice. The cinematography is top notch, however.

FUN FACTOR: 2/5 – Unless you find debating morals fun

OVERALL: 8/10 – It’s Kurasawa, and I like ‘em.

Being Paralyzed by Choice

Occasionally there’s times in life when there’s so many possible options for action, it’s nearly impossible to decide on one, and instead nothing gets accomplished. There must be a term for this. Have you ever noticed that the more choices there are on a menu the longer it takes to select what food you want? Not including the time it takes to read all the possible selections, of course. This is a toss up, because in theory wouldn’t you be happier with more choice? On a menu there’s a greater chance they would have your favourite dish, for instance. However, this also facilitates for a greater anxiety, the customer is left wondering if they wouldn’t have enjoyed a different dish more.

A good example of this is trying to buy a digital camera. If you’re like me and you like doing as much research as possible into price, quality, review scores, company history, before making a choice, you’ll soon find that the farther you dig the more and more variables there are to consider and weigh in on the selection. I almost envy those able to walk into an electronics store, tell the salesperson “I want a camera that does this this this,” and be sold on something.

CONCEPT: 4/5 – The idea behind having as much choice as possible for everything is well meant. After all, isn’t that what living in a free country is all about?

INNOVATION: 5/5 – Never in history have so many possibilities been offered to the consumer. Not to mention the overwhelming feeling created by the first page of search results from your favourite search engine. 1,900,000 results for Earl Grey?

SATISFACTION: 2/5 – Contrary to the reasoning behind choice, people are often less satisfied with more choice due to the stress and questions that arise.

EXECUTION: 2/5 – It’s never really that paralyzing, but it can be much more complicated than need be.

FUN FACTOR: 2/5 – Not a barrel of laughs.

OVERALL: 5/10 – It’s a debate between too much choice and too little choice. Just take solace that there’s few completely wrong choices.

Kitties

Kitties are cute and fuzzy. Some are sleek, and some are fluffy. They come in all colours and shapes, and are pretty much the best animal. I know some people would argue that cows are the best animal (milk+hamburgers) or some jokester will say that humans are the best animal. Come on, we’re not animals, God made us PEOPLE. Don’t be silly. Kitties are the best animal because you can hug them, and they might make a little noise.

CONCEPT: 4/5 – Warm kitties.

INNOVATION: 4/5 – Because no matter what, I never get tired of looking at pictures of kitties.

SATISFACTION: 4/5 – Nothing like a hot kitty on a cold day.

EXECUTION: 0/5 – Don’t execute kitties.

FUN FACTOR: 4/5 – Fun for years, a kitty is a good investment.

OVERALL: 9/10 – Maowr.

Verdict – Kitties! My only regret is that I may one day be paralyzed between choosing from a bunch of cute kitties.