I overheard someone talking about their resolutions and it reminded me that I'd forgotten to set some new ones this year. I rather liked what I overheard though.. things like: Gain more weight, watch more movies, make fun of the man. Awesome!

My goal for the year is really just one thing -- gain some balance. This last year was of course wonderous but challenging. I'd like to get more sleep even if sleeping in is gone for the next decade (you listening Little G?), catch some TV and movies and relax. More gaming (woot!). Less reading -- I've been surviving the long nights by reading ebooks.. at least 1-2 a week. I'd really like to lose a bit of weight but not through silly diets .. just shaving off a little here or there, and eating better. Eating different. I've already - yes, truth be told I'm shocked too -- managed to give up cola (and I miss it so!)

Ultimately I want to amuse my young daughter, be a big part of her life and raise and educate her as best as I can. But you can't do it 100% of the time can you?

I've often ranted about how incredibly terrible our data plans are in the Great White. I mean, not just bad, but actively terrible .. to the point it probably harms the market as a whole. We're often told that in the US one can score unlimited data for their PDA or smartphone for $30 or $50 a month, where in Toronto you cannot even get unlimited anymore .. and each MB is doled out pennies at a time. In my heart, I know it is simply because even geeks aren't aware how much data they consume in an average normal browsing day, and non-geeks have no idea how to even measure the information. ie: Data plans here are measured in how many Megabytes (MB) you get for $x -- a really big expensive plan might get you 25MB for the month .. and if you're browsing someones photos, you might be pulling down a single megabyte every few photos worth. So an hours browsing, or maybe just a couple youtube videos, and you're down a hundred bucks. _brutal_

Pretty much every Canadian whose looked into it is miffed. This one lad has written a pretty fine article about it, so take a peek:

Angry Oshawa Pilot

BTW, I just have to add -- why is it that writers so love the phrase "high seas" -- where are the "low seas?"

I've always been a critic of ebooks -- not the concept, just the implementations we have so far. And by that, I mean the DRM (and to a lesser extent, the stores since there is a much more limited supply of ebooks than real books, and they tend to cost a lot!)

I can live with the requirement for batteries (if not for page turning with e-ink, but at least for backlighting, say) and so on and so forth, and one cannot argue with carrying a hundred books in your pocket. But as in most forms, DRM is just plain evil. Buying a locked down file means that someday it might be incompatible with some version of the application you need, or perhaps becomes unsupported as the source company goes out of business.. or maybe the book just times out or other silliness. As such, I've been stuck with DRM-free ebooks which are much harder to come by -- a very few stores and titles, or using the Gutenburg project, or converting from one DRM type to a non-DRM type if software is available. Painful.

Anyway, with that out of the way (I should just make a standard template used as a prelude to ebook posts) the question remains -- is any of this dire stuff really going to happen?

Well, maybe, and big too. Consider..

Mobipocket Reader has been around for probably nearly a decade now, supporting Palm OS, Windows Mobile (CE, Pocket PC, etc and so on), Symbian and others I'm sure. Amazon bought them a few years back and started moving more content over, so a lot of people took this as a sign of confidence in the platform. I mean, it was hard to get a good catalog of ebooks, and here comes Amazon getting in, so obviously Mobipocket could be a good readewr system to go with.

Fast forward to this month, when Amazon released the Kindle product, a new ebook reader using e-ink. Well, as an ebook consumer I thought I'd take a look at the specs and lo and behold, something as silly as Microsofts PlaysForNotSure is potentially going on -- the Kindle uses a new proprietary format (AZW files or somesuch) downloaded over the air, but also supports _unDRM_ed Mobipocket files. So wait, the latest and newest Amazon product doesn't support their own ebook store, Mobipocket. (ie: You buy a new book, its got DRM on it, and thus isn't usable on the Kindle. By which I mean.. any ebook you've bought from Amazon is only good on the existing devices (PDAs and Windows, say).. but not the new device.

So, is Mobipocket to be phased out? All those customers screwed? Or is the Kindle firmware going to get updated to support the format later?

Who knows, but suffice to say -- this is why DRM sucks.

*sigh* Another year where I'd like to buy some ebooks, but can't.

After a recent brief trip across the border, I would like to offer up the following:

1. Firearms (hunting rifles, say) can be found on the shelf (Walmart.)
2. Alcohol is found on the shelf (every other store.)
3. Prophylactics are within locked glass enclosures (K-Mart.)

Neo-con agenda explained!

Now, one thing I should add -- crossing into the US via the Peace Bridge and back out via the Rainbow Bridge, there was no line-up whatsoever (great timing eh?) On the way in they looked at our birth certificates and waved us in, taking all of 30 seconds. On the way back into Canada the friendly border agent didn't even take our ID at all. With all the horror stories of security nightmares, it makes you wonder ..

Apparently another edition is coming out, this time the Real Final Directors Actual Cut, or something. Blade Runner: Final Cut. Of course, so many good lines but near the end one that cannot be missed:

"I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life, anybody's life, my life. All he'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die."

The time to say this has passed now, by a week, but I did write some of this during The Bleak Days so I thought I'd pollish it a bit and let it out, Chris Tolkien-like.

Now, before I get started, let me just get this out of the way -- we all know women are the heroes of the day - the very stones upon which society is built. Any woman, sick as a dog and with one arm can still get a family ready for school and work and out the door while doing laundry and preparing a dinner for later while paying bills. The man will prick his thumb will be out of commision for a week. Furthermore, my child is also the most beautiful and crafty little baby in the world, bar none. With that, I may continue.

As I mentioned once before, men don't really get recognized over-much for what they're up to in this whole Papa thing. And thats fine, since we're usually the kind of lugs who don't care to be recognized since all we're doing is nothing special.. it is expected, it is the norm, it is merely what we do. Life and all that. Still, I I thought I would spill a little image of life out here, for fun.

The baby was sick for awhile, and teething at the same time. Which is to say she couldn't stay asleep because her nose wus plugged and so couldn't breath unless being held upright (or sitting in a bouncy chair but thats hard to set up and a trifle risky). The poor girl was moaning or crying a lot due to the pain, and it upset her eating and sleep habits terribly. Thats fine for awhile, but this dragged on for weeks, which was something. Sometimes these teeth just give us all a wallop.

So for a few weeks, my day went something like this ... get up (usually a little late I might add), head to work. Work my tail off (near year end it is always like this) and rush home soon as could be to relieve the wife.. a day with a moaning unhappy squirmy baby is a challenge to be sure. Get home, take care of sed child intently (you just have to play with this little bundle, she loves it so much!) until she gets extra cranky and head up to get her to sleep. With luck maybe a cold dinner, but that was merely optional. During this period of time the poor little girl was in such discomfort that it literally took anywhere from two to four hours to get her to sleep.. oh, for sure she might fall asleep for a few minutes, but she'd be back awake, so I'm counting when she'd actually sleep for any length of time. Also for sure is my wife helped out a bit .. it takes more than 2 hands to get sprays into a squirming baby's nose, or to get cough medicine into her mouth and so forth. But all told it was a good through-to-midnight or more to get her to sleep, and almost certainly she'd be up a half dozen times at night. Not too bad all told since we did manage to catch a few hours of sleep (interupted, but still) each night. But the thing that really got to me was the days whizzing by with not an instant to myself. Babies train you to lose the 'selfishness', thats for sure.

Due to a loooong history of being a night person who awakes and sleeps instantly, I'm night warden by choice. Love it :) Still, it was a trying couple of weeks when I'd stumble off to bed at midnight or one, and be up for work at 8am after helping the baby back to sleep two-four times in the night, or having to hold her for another hour or two during the night.

Wow! Now, many nights weren't that bad during this period, but many were.

You might recall my intense dislike of ebooks, mostly for reasons of DRM and interface. Still, if you can get a good book an rtf, txt, html or other actually open format, the DRM argument can be dropped. It is a rare book that you can obtain in sed formats of course, but there are tools for converting forcibly between some formats... so I made the plunge and fired up a very fine book reader on my PDA. (PDA because it is backlit, so I can read at night time or in the dark.) I've always ignored ebooks (I think I blogged about them in the past but if not, I can rant easily enough), but for this purpose they work well -- a baby on your shoulder half asleep or sleeping and you can still read.

I mention this only because, sick as it might be, I've been reading two books a week for awhile, almost entirely at night time. Not short books, either. (OKay, they're not Cryptonomicon either.) The days literally breezed by.. no TV, no chilling time for anything .. just work and sitting in the dark. Crazy times.

At least I've been catching up on some reading .. its been too long. About 9 months :)

Fortunately (for all of us), the baby is only a little sick now and seems to be finishing the current bout of teething -- good for her the little trooper, she doesn't deserve that punishment any more. So the last couple nights we've actually gotten a touch of rest.

Anyway, so there you go, thats the life of a daddy. Women do the hard tasks.. teaching the baby in her early months and all that, not to mention the entire birthing process. But lets not understate what daddies go through, too :) One thing I suppose worth mentioning is now that the baby is better and I have gotten a bit of time to myself, I have forgotten what it is I used to spend my time doing. I mean really..

.. isn't it all about the family now?

Funny how life teaches you the real shit.

I think I will write a couple blog entries over the next little while to talk about the hardships of mommying and the usually unmentioned and swept away difficulties of daddying. Crazy stuff really, but perhaps I either need to get it off my chest or its enlightening.. probably more of the former than latter :) Oh and for the neeks out there, I'll post a short how-to on porting code from PSP-Fat to PSP-Slim.

Yes, I know, I should be focusing on Razor (a flashback 'movie' in the new Battlestar Galactica series; I'd not watch it at all except I'm a year behind and well, this fits right into that timeline, so why not?) but alas my time has been so hard pressed and fragmented of late that I cannot focus; I am watching, but will have to take it in again later. Ensign Ro is still an evil wench :) And IKEA still sells BSG merchandise. Oh, I sort of enjoy, but not being hit so heavy wih it, the imagery that on Pegasus they hold the 'phone' upside down, since they only talk into it.. while on Galactica they hold it like a phone, so they can talk and listen too. A not so sublte message. Well done.

The last few days the poor baby has been teething and sick; her nose has been plugged with phlegm and so she cannot sleep very well and thus we spend some large time getting her to sleep, so that she can wake a couple minutes later. Very trying and takes me back to about 8 months ago when she was just a peanut in our hands .. pacing up and down the halls all night long while wishing for her sake she could settle, and for my sake since I .. guilty as it may be, just wanted to sleep for more than a few minutes. Anyway, I noticed something over the last day or two - the poor child has learnt to be afraid of the dark. Our nightlight wasn't sufficient, so with the addition of another one.. my god, she sleeps a little bit more and a little bit easier. The poor girl has suffered so much the last week and a half, it breaks the heart. But this in its own way is cute, and something we can roll with to make her feel better. The other day I spent some 4-5 hours over the night just getting her to sleep. Man.

Its really been a known thing for a few days or a week now, but the official announcement is out -- Goggle has launched Android, its Linux based mobile phone OS platform. This is the foundation with no house on top, but if it proves to be a robust foundation (solid, flexible enough to be ported to many devices, easy to lock down for telcos and easy to develop applications for), it could be a good thing. It'll be fun to watch the next few days as people inevitably compare it to established stacks like Apple's iPhone has (ie: an OS with a relatively complete application suite and a year head start) and the traditional smartphones OSes (Symbian, Palm/ACCESS and Windows offerings.)

As usual, Michael Mace has a very good article on things here -- I really love the closing lines:

It's going to use open source and alliances to suck the profitability out of anybody who creates a proprietary island that it can't target.
It'll be interesting to see if and how Google applies this principle to the upcoming frequency auction in the US.
Or to anyone else who gets in its way.

So many topics have come to mind the last few weeks, but just as easily drifted away. On the rough nughts when the baby is gnashing through her growth spurts and clawing her way through the rising waves of inputs, time goes quickly as we cheer her. On the easy nights when she plays away and giggles with fascination at her new found skills, what stone-hearted scoundrel could avoid playing with hose tiny probing fingers? So either way the days tumble by, rocks in a slide. (Last night was a funky night, so I will cop out on the rest of this posting :)

A very good friend of mine who had comforting thoughts a year ago when they were welcomed, resent an excerpt from a novel that was timely then. It is excellent stuff, clear and precise and binding. So I rcord it here for when it might be needed again, and as a mini review .. I've not read the novel but I think I must based on these few paragraphs. Perhaps they will entice you as well. (And if not, go read some Neal Stephenson. He'll mess you up.)

...too many others were gone, and I sought chill comfort in an analogy of death that has been with me for years. It doesn't explain or justify. It just seems to remind me how things are.

Picture a very swift torrent, a river rushing down between rocky walls. There is a long, shallow bar of sand and gravel that runs right down the middle of the river. It is under water. You are born and you have to stand on that narrow, submerged bar, where everyone stands. The ones born before you, the ones older than you, are upriver from you. The younger ones stand braced on the bar downriver. And the whole long bar is slowly moving down that river of time, washing away at the upstream end and building up downstream.

Your time, the time of all your contemporaries, schoolmates, your loves and your adversaries, is that part of the shifting bar on which you stand. And it is crowded at first. You can see the way it thins out, upstream from you. The old ones are washed away and their bodies go swiftly by, like logs in the current. Downstream where the younger ones stand thick, you can see them flounder, lose footing, wash away. Always there is more room where you stand, but always the swift water grows deeper, and you feel the shift of the sand and the gravel under your feet as the river wears it away. Someone looking for a safer place can nudge you off balance, and you are gone. Someone who has stood beside you for a long time gives a forlorn cry and you reach to catch their hand, but the fingertips slide away and they are gone. There are the sounds in the rocky gorge, the roar of the water, the shifting, gritty sound of sand and gravel underfoot, the forlorn cries of despair as the nearby ones, and the ones upstream, are taken by the current. Some old ones who stand on a good place, well braced, understanding currents and balance, last a long time. A Churchill, fat cigar atilt, sourly amused at his own endurance and, in the end, indifferent to rivers and the rage of waters. Far downstream from you are the thin, startled cries of the ones who never got planted, never got set, never quite understood the message of the torrent.

-- John D. MacDonald, _Pale Gray For Guilt_

I mean, one can question the Bush administrations motives and efficiency and so-forth (though I don't doubt for a minute Dubyah is actually a bad person; I really do think he is sincere. And a fascist, but I digress.) But when a prominent wing of the government outright attempts to trick the public Orwellian-style, and furthermore actually believes they can get away with it.. the only conclusion one can draw is that they believe the American public is stupid enough to go for it. Or else this stunt was during the World Series so no one would notice. Pretty disgusting if you ask me. This is one administration that needs to facde jail time or serious fines .. anyone else tries to pull those stunts (*cough* Enron) and they're up a creek.

Riddle me this Batman -- why does the word Pacifist include Fist. And Passing one.

That phrase has popped into my mind a few times over the last couple weeks. I suppose I've been revisiting old vices to work out if I want to attempt to discard them or not, but its tough -- vices are vices because they're just so darned lovable. Consider caffeine -- I don't drink coffee (its disgusting) or tea (too lazy), but imbibe cola by the truckload. (I'm trying to work the word 'imbible' into this somehow, but its just not going to fit.) Anyway, I don't drink the cola for the caffeine -- its a nice little boost (and yes, all you coffee drinkers will note how patheticly small a boost it is while you gag on your vile bean) but I just dig the taste. Of late I'm hooked on the Dr. Pepper, much as I was as a child when they ran a contest whereby cans would have a Space Invader printed on the bottom.

Now that was something. Hell, I can blame them right -- who can refuse a delicious beverage with a giant pixelated monster on the bottom?

Still by the by, we all know cola (diet or otherwise) is really bad for us. I've given it up before a few times and endured crippling headaches for a few days to emerge the better man, only to decide wholeheartedly I'd rather be on the sauce than not.

Another vice (I prefer 'feature') is a certain piece of jewellery embedded in my person. In my tongue, you perves. Its pretty happy in there, and that location is relatively private .. so I've never been worried about the job interviews or the like. My daughter seems fascinated by it, too. But really, my teeth have been severely damaged by it over the long years I've been sporting it (probably 15 or so now!) As my brother would put it - "Its harder than you". The partial solution is to pick up plastic studs for the bar instead of the usual stainless steel ones -- plastic should wear on the goods so much more less.

But the question that has entered my mind so many times the last few weeks -- to be an example for my child, should I be healthy by default? I love my cola and my tonguering. But ditching both would improve my overall health and knocking off a few poounds due to reduced cola consumption would add some time (and isn't _any_ time worth it) to my existance on this terra firma. And cost less to boot.

But damn you Mr. Pepper, you makes a fine bevvy. So many long nights over these few decades have we danced the ends of the candle together..

Hmmmm.

Portal has the potential. Like chocolate. It knows things. Sadly, this latest title from mighty Valve of Halflife fame, is only scratching a surface where lay many itches in waiting.

(Portal is I think available only in The Orange Box, a collection including the aforementioned Halflife 2 title and so forth, plus Team Fortress 2, and all at a very compelling price. Sure, you have to bend over for the Steam system to violate your machine, but fine.. games downloading in background direct to your spinal column, is oft worth the discomfort. Or you can buy the XBox 360 version.)

Anyway, Portal is probably unique among games (how rare is that?) since it is really a puzzle game implemented within a first person shooter. Doubleplusgood. The central puzzle is that your avatar, standing at the front of some strange room, must be brought to an exit at the other end.. where 'end' is defined as somewhere else in the 3d-space instead of being opposite you. What sets this apart is the method of control the player imposes over his world is via a portal gun - a device that lets the player place two circular entrances into a wormhole into the world. Think of it like this -- placing a portal on a wall beside you and also down the hall on the floor means you could then walk into the wall and end up walking up and out of the floor by the by. Momentum is maintained, so if you jump through the wall on an angle, you'll fly out of the floor at that angle relative to the portals position on the floor. Neat. And immediately usable, as if a new limb on your body.

Suffice to say this simple mechanism is really compelling. I found myself looking at a long corridor to walk down and thinking immediately 'hell with this' .. drop a portal on one wall and a wall at the end, step through and turn around and keep going, instantly saving a few seconds of treading about. A tool like this you would simply make use of in every day life should it turn up. Second nature.

Naturally, the game puzzles are more complex than than that -- you'll find yourself dodging gun turrets (or dropping them through floors), falling onto floors several stories down so that you can vault high over some obstacle, or climbing around strange 3d rooms laid out like a jenga tower, not in any sensible square like we use. Its fantastic. Sometimes reactions must be quick as you'll be placing portals just in time to capture and repoing something, then flinging yourself through the air to an exit and so forth, but its all good. If something seems really hard and out of place, you're probably doing it the hard way. Without revealing anything, a few times I found msyelf up against somethign seemingly twitchy and hard, then realizing I could totally circumvent it via some clever placement of portals. The imagination reels with options, but Valve has very carefully constrained the levels so you can't be done them in mere seconds.. no, you must use strategy, delicious delicious strategy.

The problem is that Portal is really short. 19 levels, where the first 10 are really just two minute trainers to get you used to travelling in this erratic way. So really, we're talking about 9 or 10 actual levels, each relatively unique, that you can complete in 5 or 10 minutes. So in total, a couple hours gameplay. Still, considering this is one small part of a cheap pacakge its worth the money.. but its a steak dinner without the potatos -- you are left wanting.

I commend Valve for their usual high quality; each main level presents a new theme, and they exploit it in that session and move on. Most games would flog each theme for dozens of levels each. But in this one case, I would _love_ to see more.. even of the same. Just a few more levels without waiting for the modding community. With how short the game is, one can only assume Valve was really just being lazy.. rather assuming the modders would make their content for them rather than meeting half way. In this day and age it is difficult to go the right distance .. to provide enough content to be good, without going too far and delaying indefinately or spending too much and all that. But this is enough to make one mad.

I mean really.. if I can complete the game over a couple of very short sessions, it means someone with normal human free time could knock it off in one evening. Thats pretty sad for a title with such huge potential.

The Orange Box is excellent value, and all the games therein are fantastic.. but don't be lazy, GabeValve. Where'd those years of development go? There must be dozens of half baked levels lieing around.. you going to troll them out over months? bleh. I suppose with how little free time I have this is nice in a way.. a game I can finish! But 99% of the rest of the world expendable time.

OKay, this is a little gamer-centric so I'll explain. Black Mage sees something stupid in the world, and then exclaims:

I'd cry, but there aren't enough tears.

That riff always makes me laugh. Just like Not yours in Fark or seeing lolkitty or Cliche Kitty.

Aside: Star Wars Lego (For PSP) really does rock. Screw you naysayers!

As the baby rounds past the 6mo mark we're slowly growing accustomed to our new form of what normal is. There have been some 'deer-in-the-headlights' moments when the theatres show movies we wish to see and likely won't for quite some time, but all in all I'm pretty happy with how things have shaken out. I even made a point of sitting down with my laptop to catch a couple of films. That was something.

I meant to post longer reviews after I'd seen the films, but alas time has been fleeting. At least I got to see some :)

300

Well, sometimes all of us just have to enjoy movies about big sweaty gladiators. As a kid, I was veritably steeped in Spartan city-state lore so I was even vaguely aware of the recorded history about the battle depicted in this film. But really I just wanted to see it because Frank Miller (of graphic novel fame, such as Sin City which you may have also seen a movie translation of) wrote it. (I'd like to insert a snide comment about Robert Jordans death too, but mother said I should speak positive words of other people.) Anyway, its all CG action, has great beards, shows some excellent shields mashing excellent opponent faces. Its a story of 300 (and some) versus an army 20 times that size.. but they're Spartan, and they kick ass. Its like Die Hard with spears. Awesome. (Again I meant to have some sweeping tear-inducing epic of review, but in the end, sleep dep leads to this mess :)

Hot Fuzz

Just awesome. This comes from the folks who created Shaun of the Dead so it had to be just excellent, and it is. See it now! Essentially three movements in this film -- first, the story of a sueprcop in London who makes his compatriots look bad so is shipped to a quiet little village. The dialog is snappy and with some plays-on-a-theme it works out very nicely to show the copper going stircrazy, seeing crime in every facet of every day life. The second movement is really where he does find crime in every corner of the place, and mayhem breaks out. Lastly, the final movement is where they start pwning old lady faces. You just can't get enough of two fisted pistol shootouts with old ladies, right? Again, the sleep dep changes whats in my mind to what comes out of my fingers but suffice to say - the film is quirky and subtle with fun dialog, and leads through, just as Shaun did, amusing unusual circumstances. With violence and laughs. I love these guys.

It came up today; it bears repeating:

Cut word lines
Cut music lines
Smash the control images
Smash the control machine.
- William S. Burroughs

Sure, competition and variety is a good thing, but it annoys me that people lurk about on myspace, livejournal, facebook and every other site I don't care about :) No way am I going to repost all my blog entries in 5 places, which is why I've always kept them on my own server - and no ownership problems this way either. But I did make this handy little script that pushes updates over to LJ so friends there could see my blog posts if they like without having to open up my site directly. Do I now have to figure out some way to do the same for facebook?

Because it sure seems like LJ is dieing to me :P

Teething keeping us up half the night aside, my brain is a little more functional today. I thought it very interesting when Apple announced the iPod Touch -- an iPod (mp3 player) with a large touch screen, a pile of storage, and good multimedia abilities. Despite the fact that PDA sales have been punished severely the last few years (and the whole product class being ignored by the manufactuers like Palm, Dell etc), Apple has just created the next PDA.

Apple for all their greatness and faults is pretty fearless these days, and they've demonstrated time and time again a willingness to take an aging concept and attempt to revitalize it, just as they've done most recently with the cell phone. We can be sure Apple knew they were just buffing up the iPod, but sneakily hoping to enter the PDA marketplace from the side..

I've not really looked into the iPod Touch specification to know how its data entry will work -- is the touchscreen simply for yes/no and kicking up applications and picking songs, or will the device feature an onscreen keyboard like the iPhone does? I doubt they will take on a grafitti-like stroke solution for fear of being branded a PDA and losing their core music-loving tech-fearing community. Regardless, the unit does feature a calendar and addressbook (with synchronization via iTunes) and media playing, which as everyone in the PDA industry knows.. account for eight tengths of what that gadget set are used for. Perhaps Apple has nailed it -- sticking to a minimal core of the highest demanded features and yet staying closed to shun the other uses will let them recapture a lost marketplace. People already carry iPods and phones, whereas carrying a PDA and phone is redundant in so many peoples minds.

Naturally, as with the iPhone, the devices are closed (for now) to developers.. more or less. No iMail port sure opens up an angle for developers to make a buck with, and gaming of course.. but I'm sure Apple will make some strategic partners (Bejewelled on yet another device), and open up web applications if.. confirmed - yes, the iPod Touch will include wireless. Sweet.

It'll hopefully be sold in Canada, even..

Way to go Apple .. while everyone else dropped the ball literally for years, as I've so often lamented and ranted about - you've picked it up again.

Please don't lock us developers out. We like to nibble on your pie.

And lets face it.. aren't we always up for a challenge regarding lunch?

The question for today (besides where to post this.. blog? LJ? Facecrack? THAC0.) is simply -- what is the oldest restaurant in your town? Have you eaten there yet?

I really have no answer for Toronto, but several around me suggest The Senator is a candidate. Their webpage suggests it is pretty old (going back to the 40s), but there being a restaurant in the same location going back to 1890's sometime. And I have eaten there as luck would have it.

But it does strike me as a topic worthy of industrious research. McDonalds will never be any good, but an establishment thats been around for 50 or dare-even 100 years.. must be delicious!

(This train of thought comes to mind because I like crusty old pubs, and my daughter is likely now teething out a second pair of biters. When she has 4 teeth, thats got to be enough for steak, right?)

I received this today. I know its nerdcore, but I'm posting it anyway.

After having just watched the latest Harry Potter film installment (in Oshawa of all places, where we derived the Punch-Mullet game), I begin to wonder.. does the bad guy ever win?

Now, I don't refer to those fine books where the bad guy is the hero (a certain Vlad Taltos comes to mind) -- I'm talking the actual opponent, the enemy, the great evil, the aggressor. Maybe he's even the good guy in the case of an anti-hero. But the other-side of the fence?

I know a number of short stories where this occurs (I Have No Mouth Yet I Must Scream for example).