I think it will be popular with Dan, since he’s willing to make tea with twigs. I believe it will not be popular with Carrie.

 › food     2003-11-30 16:34   ...0 comments

As background, I should say that I’m not a huge dance afficionado, although I find some dance performances quite enjoyable. I’m definitely not a fan of contemporary dance as a voyeuristic experience; I find many modern dance companies fall back on sexual innuendo onstage.

The beginning of Break Open Play got off to a shaky start, but quickly became much more interesting as the company left the obvious “we’re in bed together” material behind.

The dance piece constantly had me re-evaluating what was an active part of the production, and what was passive. The music (excellent, trancy, by the way) had CD clicks and needle pop sounds which gradually came to become rhythmic devices. The stage dressing, consisting of three large floor-to-ceiling sheets of paper mounted as a sort of segmented cyclorama, was soon attacked with scissors and converted to set piece, then later (with the help of some gaff tape) converted to costume. A brilliant prop was an overhead projector that lit dancers dressed in white; overhead markers coloured the dancers in while we watched. Of course, the projector later became incorporated into the performance as more than a static prop, as did the low cart it was on.

All in all, I enjoyed myself, although I thought the pace dragged a bit from time to time. I wonder what the teenagers thought of it… perhaps they thought it needed to be sexxed up?

 › events     2003-11-30 16:03   ...0 comments

Web safe colours are supported, and black and white type is displayed too. This could have been very helpful when I was deciding on blog colours.

Now, I could have placed this into many different blog categories. Life because sometimes one chooses apartment wall colours. Culture, because (brace for impact) colours likely have some cultural reference, tech:web because of the obvious web applications. Plenty of people might be interested in this cool tool.

 › technology     2003-11-29 17:52   ...0 comments

This article is badly written… plain and simple. First, the sentence structure is almost impossible to follow. Second, the article doesn’t know whether it wants to be a factual story about: (a) the details of a toronto homicide, (b) the girl who called police about the toronto homicide, (c) a retrospective about Charles Manson, (d) the provisions of the new youth criminal justice act, or (e) an opinion piece about the value of open trials.

Let’s look at the writing first:

It is the alleged plan to annihilate the boy’s whole family — supported by the fact that when his 41-year-old stepfather arrived at the house shortly after the boy had come from school, he was also assaulted, but with a baseball bat — and unspecified “cultish” aspects of the case that have evoked the helter-skelter reference.

There are an average of 31.5 words per sentence in this piece.

The following two sentences are almost incomprehensible. Did the writer really believe that we were going to be able to extract anything from these two sentences? 39 and 45 words long? The first is incredibly poorly punctuated to boot.

Just 100 pounds and 4 feet 10 inches tall, he died of knife wounds to the throat, his airway and the arteries and veins of his neck slashed in the assault — what forensic experts sometimes label as classic “overkill”.

Tellingly, he had only one so-called “defensive injury” to his hands — these are usually incurred when a victim is able to fight back — and was likely quickly overpowered by his attackers, just one of whom is over six feet tall and weighs about 200 pounds.

With respect to the “organization” of the piece, I will give the writer the benefit of the doubt and believe they were confused about the purpose of the piece. Really, there is no excuse for the kind of disorganized writing on offer here. I became more and more incredulous the more I read through the piece, wondering what sharp turn was coming next.

The Globe and Mail needs to invest more heavily in careful editing at all levels. Story editors need to be watching for stories that need to be broken up to improve their organization. Copy editors must not allow 53 word sentences to be published in the paper. There is no excuse for bad writing when it’s your job.

 › analysis     2003-11-29 15:02   ...0 comments

This rehearsal was mercifully free of lumbering basses, and was really quite good. A few pitch problems in the soprano section, and the tenors were new to the music, but otherwise quite enjoyable.

The “performance” is on Friday at Dominion-Chalmers United Church, which, incidentally, is the church of my grandmother’s (Edith and Len’s) family.

I also found this site about Messiah’s influence on Beethoven.

 › events     2003-11-29 14:04   ...0 comments

For some reason I keep having this argument with May about whether queen and king size beds are the same length or not. For some reason we never have the leisure to settle this. But tonight, I got into this debate with Carrie and Kevin, and we have found the solution.

As it turns out, if you don’t buy any extra-long type mattress, then twin and double are the same length (75 inches). Queen and King are the same length (80 inches).

This confirms my suspicion that I would like a queen size bed, so that I can sleep without wanting to be diagonal all the time.

I feel no need for a king size. As May says, you need to make a long distance call to reach the person on the other side of the bed!

 › cool     2003-11-28 23:49   ...0 comments

Also, what is generally printed as one volume these days is actually two separate works, published ten years apart (in 1605 and 1615). I’ve completely read the first book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but the second one (like many sequels of today) loses a bit of the fresh edge of the first.

Still, the books are surprisingly readable (although this is a contemporary translation, so this may not be surprising after all) and the story is still quite enjoyable. Widely believed to have established the paradigm of the novel, Don Quixote is still a compelling piece of reading besides.

Here’s a short passage that tickled my fancy:

The first thing that caught Sancho’s eye was a whole steer spitted on a whole elm tree, and in the fire over which it was roasting there was burning a good-size mountain of firewood; six earthenware pots that were aound the blaze had not been made in the common mold, for they were six medium-sized vats, and each could hold a whole slaughterhouse of meat. Whole sheep were swallowed up and hidden in them as if they had been mere pigeons. Innumerable were the hares already skinned and chickens plucked, which hung on the trees ready for burial in the pots; countless too were the birds and game of divers kinds hanging from the branches that the air might cool them. Sancho counted more than sixty wine-skins of more than eight gallons each, and all filled, as it afterward turned out, with generous wines. There were also rows of loaves of the whitest bread, like heaps of wheat piled up on the threshing floors; the cheeses, arranged like open brickwork, formed a wall, and two caldrons full of oil, bigger than dyer’s vats, served to fry the fritters, which, when fried, were drawn out with two mammoth shovels and plunged into another caldron of prepared honey that stood nearby. There were more than fifty cooks male and female, all of them clean, busy, blithe, and buxom. In the swollen belly of the steer were twelve tender little suckling pigs, sewn up within to give the meat a delicious flavor. As to the spices of different kinds, they seemed to have been bought not by the pound but by the quarter, and all lay open to view in a big chest. Indeed, the preparations for the wedding, though in rustic style, were plentiful enough to feed an army. (Signet Classics, 2001 Edition, p. 666).

 › books     2003-11-27 23:50   ...0 comments

This is a stupid system. If I’ve got to spend 8 hours working, why on earth would I select the only 8 hours of daylight?

What would it be like if we could try to arrange our work hours so that we got some daylight to ourselves? Assuming one has to work an 8 hour day, it would seem quite easy enough to swap an afternoon of work for the equivalent amount of daylight time.

For example, I tend to work from about 10 am to about 6 pm daily. A simple daylight-preserving work schedule might be to work from 10 until noon, then stop working from noon until 6 pm, then work until midnight.

Worth a shot? Perhaps I’ll give it a try sometime soon, no more than a few times a week I think.

 › musings     2003-11-19 23:48   ...0 comments

Our landlords apparently had the heating people over twice while we were away in Toronto last weekend, and the results are miraculous, we now have a balmy 72° throughout the apartment, and we are much happier.

 › domicile     2003-11-18 20:14   ...0 comments

He and I have struck a deal to seriously check out each other’s tools, and also monitor each others’ weblogs so we’ll know someone is out there.

    2003-11-14 13:02   ...0 comments

Temperature in the living room is 57° this morning, and we have 60° in the hallway.

They are supposed to be bringing in a guy to replace some missing storm windows, but who knows when that will occur. The landlords seem concerned, but slightly ineffective at dealing with this problem.

Please send Johnson’s hotshots by fastest post.

 › domicile     2003-11-14 10:39   ...0 comments

Just tonight, I have folded up the bottom of a Kleenex box and jammed it in between the window frame and the jamb. This has stopped the window from rattling back and forth loosely, causing irritating knocking sounds that would for sure have interrupted sleeping.

I am thinking about what the cave people must have gone through, not having any cardboard. How would they stop their heavy wooden window frames from banging? Not to mention, the fact that they would have had trouble making their boats without it.

Shipping things must have really been impossible for cave people. Without cardboard, most modern shipping companies will charge extra for their overnight shipping. And what would they store old photos and snapshots in without cardboard shoe boxes?

I guess it must have been sheer luck that there are still humans in 2003. Discovering cardboard so late, we have surely been woefully unprepared for the new millenium.

 › musings     2003-11-14 00:28   ...0 comments

This blog needs to stop being so much template, and start having more content.

 › blogging     2003-11-10 21:55   ...0 comments