Brian's Blogroll
trifecta of great events on the horizonMarch 12, 2010 i have three great things coming up which blend love, travel and music
next, we are going to mayan riviera, mexico from march 31st to april 8th! i was there last year and am returning to be part of tressa's friend angie's wedding. i really enjoyed the trip last year but have tours that i did not get a chance to experience (was not enough time). the rio secreto, or secret river, tour lets you put on wetsuits and head lanterns and go in an underground cenote system with narrow tunnels. exciting! as well we will visit xcaret which is a giant nature eco park - partly natural, partly manmade - that might take the entire day :) - animals, plants, snorkeling
i am excited to be going with tressa and for the buffets...ha. so much good food. finally, david gray is coming to saskatoon, and i am a fan. i have got tressa to like him too, and we have 3rd row seats in a small-medium sized ("comfy") venue on may 18th |
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an anecdote about noise and toleranceMarch 12, 2010 tressa and i are blessed with a downstairs neighbour who complains about the noise we make. this would be fine, if we were making noise. at first we thought that it was legit complaints on account of me moving in, shuffling furniture, doing some assembly, etc. turns out that the only part of these complaints that was genuine was the 'whine'...wah-wah the downstairs tenant introduced himself by saying something like "hey i'm not a douchebag". and when someone says that, you can be pretty confident that they are a full fledged douchebag. despite the condo really being a converted apartment building with wood floors - something i and the superintendant have mentioned, he called tressa and i elephants.
the irony is tressa and i are quiet for the most part (she does stomp around like an elephant sometimes ; ), we hear the complainer and his girlfriend fight daily (for the girlfriend think shrieky from the carebears. the reason i am blogging right now is because their 'boof boof boof' bass is giving me a headache. i have lived in various shared environs for almost ten years and never had a noise complaint, despite playing guitar (like a phenom i might add...) if we are elephants, than the people above us sound like stampeding elephants. i have not thought about complaining. nothing to gain. i did so once in my life - my first apartment, ten years ago. the woman above me weighed about 300lbs and i lost sleep to the rhinocerous constantly shuffling. one day i got the nerve to go up and ask if she could be quieter. i received the sentence "no. it's the floor" and she shut the door. lessons learned. one - you have to live your life, do not tippy toe around for others. lesson two - do not anger the people who live above you - it is much easier for them to make you hear them than for you to try to annoy them. i have received various great pieces of personal advice and anecdotes from people who had similar situations. "...if they were loud on friday night, then saturday morning i would put my speakers face down on the floor with the treble turned zero, bass full up and megadeth pumping and grab a hammer in each hand and start whaling on the floor..." to "my downstairs neighbor always complained. and i'm not a big guy. i'm not 500 lbs (this fellow is probably about a buck ten - 110lbs)... so i'd come home from the bar at 3am and start jumping up and down on the floor and yelling (expletives) ..." while we have not done these extreme methods or tried to be loud we definitely could. the subwoofer has not been hooked up out of courtesy. i have played guitar only a couple of times so far in my new environ. we have yet to play rock band in all our singing glory. stay tuned.... |
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movie review of 'the box'February 26, 2010 The Box is one of the most suspenseful, sometimes creepy, movies I have seen in a while. Although this movie got bad reviews by most critics, I am with the ones who liked it. Despite some plot flaws and a somewhat weak ending, it kept me intrigued and tense throughout.
SPOILER ALERT Cue in the mysterious and ominous Arlington Steward (Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon) - a man with half his face missing. He appears one day at the Lewis residence with a strange proposition: Here is a box with a button built into it. If you press it you will receive $1,000,000. The catch is someone in the world will die because of it. You have 24 hours to come to a decision. The financially strapped Lewis's battle over the morality of the decision but ultimately give in a press the button (there would not be much of a movie if they did not). Strange events start to unfold - nosebleeds, spying strangers, laughing lunatics, missing persons. Mr. Steward appears to be of a higher power than humans - is he the devil? is he alien? What is the purpose of this experiment he seems to be conducting? There are many questions presented on the film journey, some of which are left unanswered. This film is not for everyone. But if you like watered down (you can actually follow along) David Lynch strangeness, conspiracy theories, suspense and the 1970s, give this film a try. |
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Olympic fever in full forceFebruary 23, 2010 The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver have been going full force for a week and a half. If you are a resident of Canada you cannot help but get caught up in some of the drama. The games are filled with drama, exuberance, and a mix of disappointing and thrilling moments.
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Created a new site, tech-lull.comFebruary 17, 2010 I have setup another domain tech-lull.com Seperating the site was done for several reasons including:
I have registered another domain (art-lull) and am considering moving my artistic endeavors to it after this move is complete. That would leave briandanchilla.com as primarily a blog with homepage entry points to tech-lull and art-lull On all these sites, I want to improve the ease of adding comments and the presentation of comment replies. Feel free to suggest changes, in the form of a comment or email, |
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moving in with tressa and starting a new job can be exhaustingFebruary 13, 2010 Tressa and I are finally done transporting everything from my place to hers. We did it a little at a time over the last ten days and got her brother Brant to help with his truck yesterday for the bed and futon. We put a bunch of stuff on kijiji and sold most of it and threw out even more stuff. There are some duplicate items hanging around for now but the place looks very good. We look forward to throwing a 'house warming' party in a couple of weeks when we are a little more settled.
No, this is not our shelving unit, I just think it looks cool. Finished my first week of work at my new job. As expected, it is vastly different from my old one. I learned a lot for one week, on topics ranging from xsl, ppc, adwords, seo and postgres. I was introduced to the systems used and did a fair bit of development. There are some exciting products with the company, such as dingaling which offers cheap VoIP calling and listcars4free which lists vehicles for free. Both sites will be getting redesigned in terms of style and have their featuresets enhanced. As I went from my old job to new job with only a two day weekend in between, this upcoming long weekend is very welcome. |
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The Imaginarium of Doctor ParnassusFebruary 02, 2010 Last night I watched The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and very much enjoyed it. spoiler alert! do not read if you do not want some of the movie ruined for you. It is from the creative mind of Terry Gilliam, director of Brazil, Twelve Monkeys and a member of Monty Python. The movie has a good plot and great visuals, and is also interesting for the morbid reason that it was Heath Ledger's final film. He died about a third of the way through filming, and Gilliam thought that it would never be finished. But alas, it did, and it works.
The movie pits Dr. Parnassus, played by Christopher plummer against Mr. Nick (the devil) played superbly by Tom Waits. As the story unfolds we see that Parnassus is a member of a travelling sideshow, literally a single mobile show. Also in his troupe are the dwarf Percy (Verne Troyer), magician Anton (Andrew Garfield), and Parnassus' daughter Valentina (Lily Cole). Ledger thickens the plot by playing Tony, a mysterious stranger that the crew finds hanging under a bridge. Tony claims not to remember anything and appears to be hiding something. He joins the troupe but under the watchful eyes of Parnassus and Anton. The plot hinges around repeated bets between Parnassus and Mr. Nick and the revelation that one such bet was that any child of Parnassus, the devil will own when they turn 16. Valentina just happens to be turning this age in a few days, and the devil is back to collect. Being a sporting man, the devil wagers Parnassus one last bet - "first one to five souls collected" wins.
Parnassus has a prop mirror which acts connects to his subconscious and creates a dream landscape for anyone who enters through the mirror. Once inside, they are free to choose the easy route (the devil) or the harder route (Parnassus). The movie is visually stunning, and Gilliam enlisted Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Ferrill to finish Ledger's parts. You might think this would be disastrous, but it is done in a way where if you did not know that Ledger died during the movie, you might not know that it was reworked. As a final note, when I say visually stunning, it is, but it is nothing like Avatar in 3D which is just incredible. However, it is a much better movie overall, with solid plot and just under two hour runtime. Once Avatar is out of theatres, I would recommend this movie over it to anyone. |
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my favourite 25 folk/rock/pop albums of the decadeJanuary 31, 2010 Akin to Vince's Top 25 Metal Albums of the Decade is my favourite 25 folk/rock/pop albums of the decade. These are my personal favourites, so many critically acclaimed and popular albums will NOT make the list. I only allowed myself to pick one album from each artist, which was tough. The listing is presented by year and then alphabetically. 2000
2001
2002 2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
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improved 'song of the day' areaJanuary 29, 2010 If you have not visited the song of the day archive section in awhile, I invite you to revisit it. There is now streaming available for most songs.
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tressa's flickr fed panda galleryJanuary 28, 2010 I was investigating how to pull in flickr photos and create a javascript gallery, and came up with a tutorial on my method. Then to show a practical example, I created a panda gallery for tressa. Click the thumbnail to view the working version, which pulls in from an rss feed and updates hourly.
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a couple days later there was a hallway confrontation where he complained about noise from days that we were practically not in the condo all evening. another complaint occurred when my sixty year old parents, tressa and i visited and played a scrabble-like game and watch curling. (we're pretty wild).
My favorite sports to watch so far have been the disappointing men's hockey team (I still have faith though - and Brodeur is a great goalie, but I think it is Luongo's time, so I am happy he is starting tonight against Germany), curling, snowboard cross, speed skating and a bit of the figure skating.
© Brian Danchilla 2003 - 2010