You often here of some people talking about the first time they seen Star Wars in the 70’s and how they were blown away with the visuals and I remember the first time I seen Independence Day in the cinema and was stunned by how real the exploding Empire State Building looked. These were big moments in movie technology and after going to see Avatar last weekend I think I’ve seen the next step. Avatar in 3D is something unseen before in the movies. It isn’t the first 3D movie, but it is the first big budget, action movie in 3D and from start to finish the visuals, CGI and action in 3D is remarkable and make no mistake, this will be the first 3D action flick of many.
In ten years from now, perhaps much less, every movie will be in 3D and we’ll likely look back on Avatar like I looked back on Independence Day when I seen it over ten years on, noticing flaws in the special effects. Movie technology moves so dam fast from robotic sharks to real looking explosions to CGI to HD to 3D. In a matter of just a few decades the movies have come so far … watch Star Wars now and while still a great movie, nothing will make you sit a-gasp at the effects. It’s like when I was a kid and watched something in Black and White, I couldn’t understand how people delt with that all the time for their movies and likewise my Grand Children will probably laugh at the fact I was in awe at a movie in 3D.
But like them movies before, Avatar will be seen as a ground breaker and I’m glad I seen it. Actually, without seeing it on the big screen in 3D you might have to wait until you get hold of a 3D Tv, a set of 3D shades and a top notch sound system to truly appreciate the movie.
The story is good also. When I first seen the trailer I didn’t think much of it and I wasn’t too interested. It didn’t look my kind of movie, though when I heard it was in 3D I wanted to go along just to see what this whole 3D thing was all about regardless of what I thought of the movie itself. As it turned out though the story was good, it wasn’t 100% action and there was a few twists and turns to keep you interested right until the end. The true measure of how captivated I became in now just the 3D element, but also the story, was when with about 1/2 an hour to go I had the sudden urge to take a pee but refused to let myself run for the toilets in case I missed something vital.
I might buy it on DVD when it comes out but then again I might be held back by the worry that I’ll be seriously let down watching it on a much smaller screen without the ability to view it in 3D. I almost want to go back once more just to see it again before it is gone forever, or at least until we all have HD TV’s and are sitting in our living rooms with the 3D specs on like a bunch of idiots.
Is it just me or does this new iPad thing released today by Apple look like either a really thin and small laptop or a really big iTouch? I don’t doubt what it can do is excellent but can it do more than a laptop? You’d need a laptop bag to carry it around in though because it sure won’t fit in your pocket like the iTouch! I shouldn’t be too harsh on it, I’m doing this critique based on some images on the web I have seen but based on the starting price it’ll likely be a while before I get one to find out for myself how great it actually is.
The last few weeks have been pretty hectic in work as well as getting organized for Christmas and when I have had some free time I have either spent it watching Christmas movies in the fresh scent of the cinnamon candle or writing over on the sports blog and trying to keep up with the fast moving world of sport. With the decade coming to an end I am trying to do some kind of decade in review thing, but with a week and a day left until the new year I am quite a bit behind on it now and beginning to regret starting it. Oh well, it’s all part of the fun.
Today I’m off out of town for the festive season ready to party and enjoy some pond hockey. It’ll also be my brithday tomorrow so double the reason to celebrate.
So just a quick note to say Merry Christmas to anyone reading and a Happy New Year - I had to say ‘Merry Christmas’ for I’m sick of people saying ‘Happy Holidays’ - It’s Christmas!!!
It is official. Today being the 1 December 2009 means that for the entire month of November there was no snow in Toronto for the first time in more than 160 years. But snow is on the way according to experts and while it would be nice to have some over the Christmas period I’m in no rush for it to arrive and certainly won’t want it hanging around long though I doubt such wishes will be granted. As a kid in Northern Ireland snow was so rare that it was great when it came but here in Toronto were you get so much of the stuff and you have to commute to work and back each day, the fun of it wears off pretty quickly.
The TTC here in Toronto decided to raise the price of a subway ride from $2.75 to $3 yesterday. I’m sure I can live with the 25c price rise but plenty of people are unhappy with it, some threatening to now go out and buy a car. Does this change in price really make it now viable to go get a car? While I’d rather it stayed as it was $3 to travel anywhere in the Toronto area is still not half bad. But, if the TTC are looking to cover costs then instead of taking it out on their valuable passengers, why not lobby for the city to put in one of them congestion taxes on cars driving in the inner city hub and having the city put some of the funds raised towards public transport? That was the price of a subway ride stays down and traffic downtown is cut and the city of Toronto look great for ‘going Green’. Just a thought that I doubt will come to fruition.
Nothing sells like fear and unfortunately every money grabbing crook from here to Australia knows it and they will feed off it like a bunch of rotten vultures out to feed on the vulnerable and desperate. The movie 2012 has hit the cinemas and officially turned the ‘world ending in 2012′ theories, global. Like the millennium bug before it, conspiracy theorists have decided than 2012 and not in fact 2000 is the year the world will end and you had better buy one of their books on how to survive it or be doomed. 21 December 2012 is the exact day just like 31 December 1999 was the exact day as well and this time it isn’t a mysterious bug, but a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar that is coming to an end. The calendar contrived by an ancient but brilliant race of humans seemingly have been able to create a calendar that when it runs out will enrage the Sun and the rest of the Galaxy to such levels that they will turn on the Earth and beat it to a pulp. There is even a mystery but massive rogue planet that is going to join in the fun and ram earth presumably out of orbit.
But now NASA have came forward to ease our fears that all the different ways the world will come to an end in 2012 are nonsense and that you cannot just quit your job, sell your home and party hard for the next thirty seven months. The idea of doing that actually sounded quite appealing until tonight when I heard NASA’s ‘all clear’ message.
To begin with, astronomers agree, there is nothing special about the Sun and galactic center aligning in the sky. It happens every December with no physical consequences beyond the overconsumption of eggnog. And anyway, the Sun and the galactic center will not exactly coincide even in 2012.
If there were another planet out there heading our way, everybody could see it by now. As for those fierce solar storms, the next sunspot maximum will not happen until 2013, and will be on the mild side, astronomers now say.
So there you have it. 2012 the movie still looks a good one, but like Independence Day before it, it is nothing more than a good action movie.
Below, NASA’s David Morrison, expert on Earth impact hazards and currently Interim Director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute, speaks on what are the risk to Earth in 2012. Though the conspiracy people will warn you not to listen to him because he is part of NASA which is part of the big coverup. Of course, Mr. Morrison is happily going about his work safe in the knowledge that come December 2012 all his work will be for nothing, and we’ll be vaporized. More»
Is it worth the risk to throw out some of the junk that is cluttering up my desk drawers? Just moments ago I was looking through the drawers to find something when I realised how much junk had gathered. I’m usually quite fussy about things like that and usually have one drawer for my Mac booklets and cleaning stuff, another for stationary, another for my camcorder tapes, another for various other instruction manuals. I have also realised that if I could free up even half of one drawer it should allow the clutter to go down just enough so that things can actually be found without everything being pulled out and set on top of the desk only to be squeezed back inside ready for the next time I need something.
Is it true that theory that if you have something that sits and gathers dust for years and years suddenly becomes necessary the day after you decide to just throw it out? If I take the user guide for my phone and throw it away along with some set-up discs from my 4-year old laptop will I wake up tomorrow to find my phone not working and my laptop asking for some disc it hasn’t seen since the first day it was bought to be inserted to keep the thing alive?
Hmm… Maybe I’ll leave things as they are for a little while longer and see what happens. Maybe the next time I pull everything out of the drawers I’ll sift through the junk and toss it into a rubbish bag and sent it flying 18 stories down the garbage shoot in my building and to hell with the consequences.
Today is 11th November, Armistice Day, Rememberance Day, whatever you refer to it, but a day to remember the ultimate sacrifice by so many for our freedom. From World War 1 to Afganastan today, so many brave men have laid down their lives for their country and we should never forget it.
Sport has done a lot for Remembrance Day this past week and weekend. Many teams in the English Premier League and National Hockey League teams have had pre-game ceremonies that have involved ex-servicemen and included minute silences and it has to be commended as it brings further awareness to new generations of people that the veterans who have died serving their countries should not be forgotten. Some football teams even put poppies on their shirts for one off games and I would assume will auction them off for the British Legion.
But the biggest thing that stands out for me when you see these old World War 2 veterans hobble out onto the field or ice as part of the ceremonies with all their medals and no doubt hours and hours of memories is the reminder that the thing we watch and the thing we worry about and the thing we complain about and thing we debate and get worked up over called sport really means nothing. It is just sport and while we refer to the athletes as our heros, the real heros are the ones we should remember today and stand silent for at 11am this morning.
I found this especially funny because I used to do some fork lift driving for a number of years. I can’t imagine doing something like this and then trying to go into the boss to tell him that there had been a minor incident…
The 6 o’clock news today had nothing but reports of the lines gathering around health clinics across Toronto with thousands of people scrapping it out for places inside to get their arm jabbed to free themselves from potentially contracting the deadly Swine Flu. Just another example of a media storm in a tea-cup and causing panic among the masses. Talk about a major over reaction. While H1N1 can be a serious risk for children and the elderly the clinic I seen on TV had plenty of healthy looking adults swarming outside trying to get in front of both woman and children like some first class passenger on the Titanic doing all they could to get onto a life raft before the boat went down. However, on this occasion no boat is going down, the world is not coming to an end and Swine Flu is not going to wipe us out. Let the children, the elderly and the sick get sorted and we can all wait our turn. A friendly reminder: More people die per year from regular flu. I know nobody wants to get sick and suffer for a few weeks, but is it worth powering down to the nearest clinic and banging on the door until someone sedates you with a flu jab? Let’s hope this whole theory of the world coming to an end in 2012 doesn’t prove to be true because I can only imagine the kind of panic that would cause if Swine Flu can generate this.
… a lot of wonderful things and it is one of the leading cities in the world in so many ways, but one area it lacks badly is its roads. I haven’t been to all the big cities in the world and drove around their suburbs to see where Toronto stands in relative quality, but from the tooth rattling ride I get in the bus each day I can’t imagine it stands up well. A lot of the arterial roads through the city are in horrific state with major pot holes making it an uncomfortable bus ride or drive never mind the nightmare it is on the bike. I understand the city can only fix so many roads at a time and that the winter rules out half a years worth of road work but there are some roads you’d think would be a priority to fix immediately. It is the winters that cause the problems, the water freezes all winter and then creates cracks on the road leaving me for a summer of cycling on my road bike that could do with a set of suspension forks. Rant over!
I spent all summer out in the light breeze and summer sun (when it actually came out) riding my bike, putting in the big miles and getting into good shape. Then the sun went away, the temperatures dropped, the nights got shorter and my body was forced into the gym if I wanted to maintain any level of fitness.
Unfortunately it’s been hard to keep my body inside the gym even though it is conveniently located 18 floors below my apartment. I just cannot stand the gym. When you’re a cyclist you are used to going places and you can ride for one, two, three hours at a time without looking at the time, but in the gym I find myself looking at the clock every minute until the ten minute mark, then every thirty seconds there after.
“Surely the next time I look down fifteen minutes will have gone by”, is what goes over in my head, and so I look down and forty five seconds have passed. Legs turning … going nowhere.
So the winter is going to take a lot of motivation to keep some level of acceptable fitness in place before the sun comes back out in about six months time and I can do some proper cycling again without starting at ground zero in terms of fitness. The joys of winter!
Where has the last twelve months gone? I’ve been in Canada over a year now and I know that because we’re closing in on the Thanksgiving weekend yet again. I could have sworn it was only a few months ago since the last time we cut open Turkey and ‘gave-thanks’ to them birds for sacrificing themselves for the greater good. Maybe that last time was Easter though, closely followed by Christmas and then of course Thanksgiving ‘08. Indeed, in Canada they like to eat their Turkey’s and while I might groan about the length of winters, you won’t hear me complain about the Turkey.
Mum and Dad visit this weekend and stay for the week, it’ll be their first Thanksgiving and no doubt they’ll want to come back for more after they take in the experience. My first go at the very North American holiday was back in 2005 and this will be my third, and certainly not last, effort. I like to look at it as a little warm-up to Christmas. We take the Turkey’s that have grown to ready to eat too quickly and put them to good use, saving the skinnier ones for a few more months until they fatten up.
Does a Turkey know when it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas? I highly doubt it but the vegetarian types will lead you to believe that when the farmer isn’t in the shed the Turkey’s gather round for a meeting and wonder how they are going to escape the knife this time out. Thankfully as of now the poor little buggers haven’t come up with a plan.
I went down to the Jays game last night and took up seats in the front row of the outfield just behind the Jays bullpen as they took on the Baltimore Orioles in a 6-5 victory. At one point in the third innings the Jays smacked two home runs in a row into the same section of fans of which included myself. The first one landed three rows behind me, the second five seats to my left. It was the closest I had ever come to catching a ball but the consolation prize was that I ended up on TV. Above is a snapshot of the first home run as the ball from Aaron Hill enters the stand and you can clearly see me, decked out in the Black Jays jersey with 32 Halladay on the back looking behind me hoping somehow the ball will take a wicked bounce and fly back into my hands.
Note the huge number of empty seats. It was like that the stadium over as the attendance at Jays games plummet by the hundreds as the season winds to a close with the Jays way to far back in the standings for the games to mean anything other than one off individual battles. But if that was all it was, it was highly entertaining.
A Tornado blew through here last night and left devastation in its wake. OK, so that might be a little extreme, but I’ve never been remotely close to a Tornado before, and although I didn’t quite see the funnel, this was still pretty incredible, if not quite tragic, given some of the damage to homes across the city and that one person lost their life.
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I’ve never seen anything quite like it. When I left work around 4.30 p.m. and stood waiting on a bus that was 15 minutes late by the time it pulled up to the stop, I could feel such a humid heat and see such dark clouds that I knew a big storm was brewing. Maybe some Thunder to finally wash this sticky heat away for a few days and give us some pleasant weather for walking around in. About two hours later when on Skype to the folks back home I noticed out the window how it looked more like 9 p.m. than six-thirty as a big black cloud circled round our 18th floor window and blocked out any kind of view one might be hoping to get from the 18th floor on a random Thursday evening in Toronto. You could almost count it in … three, two, one … Crack … Thunder in the distance and the first rain drops on the window. I went over, opened the blinds and got ready for what was going to be a big time mother nature firework display.
We had done the same thing a few weeks ago for a big lightning storm, but this one you could tell was going to be huge — It still should have been bright outside but already, with rain crashing against the window and trees pointing almost horizontal from the intense wind picking up, it was dark and with the big cloud around us I could barely see the cars 18 floors below now driving at a crawling pace.
